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A Reaping 



# » 


Author of ' The Climber,’ ‘ Sheaves,’ etc. 


‘Only reapers, reaping early 
In among the bearded barley, 

Hear a song that echoes cheerly. . . 


New York 

Doubleday, Page and Company 

1909 


Printed in England 


T1UNSFP ((( tl< 

D. c. p | ..ibbarY 

BBPT. IO, 1^40 


JL 1 3 1913 


216240 


, 1 SSSSSSSSSSS a 


v> 

* TO 

LADY EVELYN LISTER 



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. I 

















CONTENTS 


PAGE 

June ------ i 

July - - - - - - 21 

August - - - - - - 43 

September - - - - - 63 

October - - - - - 85 

November ------ 113 

December ------ 137 

January ------ 163 

February ------ 189 

March ------ 215 

April - - - - - - 245 

May ------ 271 







































































































f* 



























































































































































































































JUNE 














JUNE 


Of all subjects under or over the sun, there is none 
perhaps, even including bimetallism, or the lengthy 
description of golf-links which one has never seen, 
so utterly below possible zones of interest as that 
of health. Health, of course, matters quite enor- 
mously to the individual, but nobody with good 
health ever gives two thoughts (far less one word) 
to the subject. Nobody, in fact, begins to think 
about health until his own begins to be inferior. 
But, then, as if that was not bad enough, he at once 
clubs and belabours his unhappy friends with its 
inferiority. It becomes to him the one affair of 
absorbing importance. Emperors may be assas- 
sinated, Governments may crumble, it may even 
be 92 degrees in the shade, but he recks nothing of 
those colossal things. He ate strawberries yester- 
day, and has had a bilious headache almost ever 
since. And the world ceases to revolve round the 
sun, and the moon is turned to blood, or ashes — 
I forget which. 

But the real invalid, just like the man who enjoys 
real health, never talks about such matters. It is 
only to the amateur in disease that they are of the 
smallest interest. The man who is well never thinks 


3 


A 2 


A REAPING 


about his health, and certainly never mentions it ; 
to the man who is really ill some divine sense of 
irresponsibility is given. He brushes it aside, just 
as one brushes aside any innate inability ; with 
common courage — how lavishly is that beautiful 
gift given to whomever really needs it — he makes 
the best of other things. 

These poignant though obvious reflections are 
the outcome of what occurred this evening. I sat 
between two friends at dinner, both of them people 
in whom one’s heart rejoices. But one of them is 
obsessed just now with this devil of health-seeking. 
The other has long ago given up the notion of seek- 
ing for health at all, for it is not for her. She faces 
incurable disease with gaiety. So I have to record 
two conversations, the worse first. 

‘ Oh, I always have ten minutes’ deep-breathing 
every morning. It is the only way I can get enough 
air. You have to lie on your back, you know, and 
stop one nostril with your finger, while you breathe 
in slowly through the other ; and you should do 
it near an open window. There is no fear of catch- 
ing cold, or if you do I can send you a wonderful 
prescription. . . . Then you breathe out through the 
other nostril. I wish you would try it ; it makes the 
whole difference. No, thanks, caviare is poison to me !’ 

* Well, so is arsenic to me,’ I said. * But why 
say so ?’ 

(It did not sound quite so brusque as it looks when 
written down, and native modesty prevents my 
explaining how abjectly patient I had been up till 
then.) 


4 


JUNE 

Then there came the reshifting of conversation, 
and we started again, with change of partners. 

* I do hope you will come to see us again in 
August,’ said the quiet, pleasant voice. ‘ I shall 
go up to Scotland at the end of the month. Your 
beloved river should be in order : there has been 
heaps of rain.’ 

But I could not help asking another question. 

‘ Ah, then they let you go there ?’ I said. 

She laughed gently. 

‘No, that is just what they don’t do,’ she said, 
‘ But I am going. What does it matter if one hastens 
it by a few weeks ? I am going to shorten it pro- 
bably by a few weeks, but instead of having six 
tiresome months on board a yacht, I am going to 
have rather fewer months among all the things I 
love. Oh, Dick quite agrees with me. Do let’s 
talk about something more interesting. Did you 
hear “Tristan” the other night ? No ? Richter con- 
ducted. He is such a splendid Isolde ! There is 
no one to approach him !’ 

There, there was the glory of it ! And how 
that little tiny joke about Richter touched the 
heart ! Here on one side was a woman dying, and 
she knew it, but the wonder and the pleasure of 
the world was intensely hers. There, on the other, 
was the excellent Mrs. Armstrong. She could not 
think about the opera or anything else except her 
absurd deep-breathing and her ridiculous liver. 
Nobody else did ; nobody cared. Even now I could 
hear her explaining to her left-hand neighbour that 
next to deep-breathing, the really important thing 
5 


A REAPING 


is to drink a glass of water in the middle of the 
morning. Slowly, of course, in sips. And she 
proceeded to describe what the water did. Well, 

I suppose I am old-fashioned, but I could no more 
think of discussing these intimate matters at the 
dinner-table than I should think of performing my 
toilet there. Besides — and this is perhaps the most 
unanswerable objection to doing so — besides being 
slightly disgusting, it is so immensely dull 1 

However, on the other side there was a topic as 
entrancing as the other was tedious, and in two 
minutes my other neighbour and I were deep in 
the fascinating inquiry as to how far a conductor — 
a supreme conductor — identified himself with the 
characters of the opera. Certainly the phrase 
‘ Richter is such a splendid Isolde ’ was an alluring 
theme, and by degrees it spread round the corner 
of the table (we were sitting close to it), and was 
taken up opposite, when a member of the Purcell 
Society gave vent to the highly interesting observa- 
tion that the conductor had practically nothing to 
do with the singers, and was no more than a sort of 
visible metronome put there for the guidance of the 
orchestra. It was impossible not to retort that the 
last performance of the Purcell Society completely 
confirmed the truth of that view of the conductor. 
Indeed, the chorus hardly thought of him even as a 
metronome. Or else, perhaps, they were deaf, which 
would account for their sinking a tone and a half ; 
in fact there were flowers of speech on the subject. 

But how extraordinary a thing (taking the view, 
that is to say, that a conductor conceivably does 
6 


JUNE 

more than beat time) is this transference of emotion, 
so that first of all Wagner, by means of merely 
black notes and words on white paper, can inspire 
the conductor with that tragedy of love which 
years ago he wove out of the sunlight and lagoons 
of Venice ; that, secondly, the conductor can enter 
into that mysterious and mystical union with his band 
and his singers, and reflect his own mood on them 
so strongly that from throat or strings or wailing 
of flutes they give us, who sit and listen, what the 
conductor bade them read into the music, so that 
all, bassoons and double-bass, flutes and strings, 
trumpets and oboes and horns, become the spiritual 
mirror of his emotion. By means of that little 
baton, by the beckoning of his fingers, he pulls 
out from them the music which is in his own soul, 
makes it communicable to them. Indeed, we need 
not go to the Society for Psychical Research for 
experiments in thought-transference, for here is 
an instance of it (unless, indeed, we take the view 
of this member of the Purcell Society) far more 
magical, far further uplifted out of the sphere of 
things which we think we can explain. For the 
mere degrees of loud or soft, mere alterations in 
tempo, are, of course, less than the ABC of the 
conductor’s office. His real work, the exercise of 
his real power, lies remote from, though doubtless 
connected with them. And of that we can explain 
nothing whatever. He obsesses every member of 
his orchestra so that by a motion of his hand he gets 
the same quality of tone from every member of it. 
For apart from the mere loudness and the mere 
7 


A REAPING 


time of any passage, there are probably an infinite 
number of ways of playing each note. Yet at his 
bidding every single member of the band plays it 
the same way. It is his thought they all make 
audible with a hundred instruments which have all 
one tone ; else, how does that unity reach us sitting 
in our stalls ? 

That is the eternal mystery of music, which alone 
of the arts deals with its materials direct. It is 
not an imitation of sound, but sound itself, the 
employment of the actual waves of air that are the 
whistle of the wind, and the crash of breakers, and 
the love-song of nightingales. All other branches 
of art deal only second-hand ; they but give us an 
imitation of what they wish to represent. The 
pictorial artist can do no more than lay a splash of 
pigment from a leaden tube on to his canvas when 
he wishes to speak to us of sunlight ; he can only 
touch an eye with a reflection in its corner to show 
grief, or take a little from the size of the pupil to 
produce in us who look the feeling of terror that con- 
tracts it. Similarly, too, the sculptor has to render 
the soft swell of a woman’s bosom in marble, as if 
it was on marble a man would pillow his head. It 
is all a translation, a rendering in another material, 
of the image that fills us with love or pity, or the 
open-air intoxication of an April morning. But the 
musician works first-hand ; the intangible waves 
of air, not a representation of them, are his material. 
It is not with a pigment of sound, so to speak, that 
the violins shiver, or the trumpets tell us that the 
gods are entering Valhalla. Music deals with sound 


JUNE 

itself, with the whisper that went round the form- 
less void when God said, ‘ Let there be light,’ with 
all that makes this delicate orchestra of the world, 
no copy of it, no translation of it, but it itself. 

And for the time being, while the curtain is up, 
the control of these forces, their wail and their 
triumph, belongs to the conductor. He gives them 
birth in the strings and the wind ; he by the move- 
ment of a hand makes them express all that sound 
expressed to the magician who first mapped them 
on his paper. Indeed, he does more ; he interprets 
them through his own personality, giving them, as it 
were, an extra dip in the bath of life, so that their 
colours are more brilliant, more vital of hue. Or 
is the member of the Purcell Society right, and is 
the man who gives us this wonderful Isolde only a 
metronome ? 

It is often said that the deaf are far more lonely, 
far more remotely sundered from the world we know, 
than are the blind. It is impossible to imagine that 
this should not be so, for it is not only the sounds 
that we know we hear, but the sounds of which for 
the most part we are unconscious, that form the 
link between us and external things. It commonly 
happens, as in the dark, that we are cut off from 
all exercise of the eyes, and yet at such moments 
we have not been very conscious of loneliness. But 
it is rare that we are cut off from all sound, and the 
loneliness of that isolation is indescribable. It 
happened to me once in the golden desert to the west 
of Luxor, above the limestone cliffs that rise from 
the valley where the Kings of Egypt lie entombed. 

9 


A REAPING 


I had sat down on the topmost bluff of these cliffs, 
having tethered my donkey down below, for the 
way was too steep for him, and for several minutes 
observed my surroundings with extreme com- 
placency. Below me lay the grey limestone cliffs, 
but where I sat a wave of the desert had broken, 
and the immediate foreground was golden sand. 
Farther away, in all hues of peacock green, lay the 
strip of cultivated land, and beyond, the steel blue 
of the ancient and mysterious river. It was early 
yet in the afternoon, and the sun still high, so that 
the whole land glittered in this glorious high festival 
of light and colour. And, looking at the imperish- 
able monuments of that eternal civilization, it 
seemed that one could not desire a more convincing 
example of the kindliness of the circling seasons, 
of the beneficence that overlooked the world from 
generation to generation, so that man might well 
say that this treasure-house of the earth was in- 
exhaustible. No breeze of any sort was stirring, 
but the air, pure, hot, invigorating, was absolutely 
still. But at that moment I suddenly felt as if 
something was dreadfully wrong, though I did not 
at once guess what it was. Then came the thought, 
the identification of what was wrong : it seemed as 
if the world was dead ; then came the reason for it : 
it was because there was no sound. For a moment 
I listened in order to verify this — listened with 
poised breath and immovable limbs. Yes, I was 
right : there was no sbund of anything at all ; 
for once the ears were deprived of the delicate 
orchestra that goes up, a hymn of praise, day and 

IO 


JUNE 

night from the earth. It was like a dreadful 
nightmare. 

I first tried coughing, to see if that would be com- 
panionable, but that did not do ; I coughed, and 
then silence resumed its reign. I lit a cigarette. I 
moved, rustled, even got up and walked a little, 
kicking the pebbles that lay about in the sand. But 
that was no use, and I perceived where the defect 
was. I knew I was alive, and could make sounds, 
but what I wanted was some evidence that some- 
thing else was alive. But there was none. 

Somehow this fact was so disquieting that I sat 
down again to think about it. In my reasonable 
mind I knew that absolutely everything was alive, 
only there was at this moment nothing to tell me 
so. Not a fly buzzed over the hot sand, not a kite 
was to be seen wheeling slow as if in sleep, a black 
speck against the inviolable blue that stretched from 
horizon to horizon. I was the only thing alive as 
far as I had evidence. Or supposing — the thought 
flashed suddenly across me — supposing I, too, was 
dead ? And what was this — this dome of air and 
the golden sand ? Was it hell ? 

I cannot describe the horror of this. Momentary 
as was the sensation, it was of a quality, a depth of 
surcharged panic, which comes to us only in night- 
mares. I was alone, I was not within touch, in 
this utter stillness, of any other consciousness, and 
surely that must be hell, the outer darkness of 
absolute loneliness, which not even the glorious 
golden orb swung centre-high in the blue could 
ever so faintly penetrate. Indeed, it and this 
xi 


A REAPING 


iridescent panorama at my feet only added some 
secret bitter irony to the outer darkness. All the light, 
the colour, the heat, which one had so loved was 
there still, but life was arrested, and there was nobody . 

Then quite suddenly and unexpectedly the farcical 
happened, for from some hundred yards away down 
below the steep cliff up which I had climbed came 
a long discordant bray from my donkey, who perhaps 
felt lonely, too. But I have never heard a sound 
which was to the spirit so overpoweringly sweet. 
I heard that, and gave a long breath, and shouted, 
* Thank you very much !’ for the whole glory of 
the noon, which silence had blackened, was instantly 
restored. 

One of the interesting things to which I have 
alluded, in contrast with the tedium of Mrs. Arm- 
strong’s health, was occurring to-day, for the 
thermometer had indeed been up in the nineties, a 
fact which fills all proper-minded people with pride. 
Our dear, stuffy old London had registered 92 degrees 
in the shade at Messrs. Negretti and Zambra’s that 
morning, and I with my own eyes had seen it. It 
was impossible not to be proud, just as it is im- 
possible not to be proud when one is in a train that 
is going over seventy miles an hour, a thing that 
may be timed by the small white quarter-mile posts 
that are so conveniently established by the side of 
the line. Once I went in a train that did a mile 
and a half in seventy-three seconds. I have not 
got over my elation yet. Or when an extraordinarily 
vivid flash of lightning occurs, with a congested 
12 


JUNE 

angry spasm of thunder coming simultaneously with 
it, are you not sorry for the nerveless soul that does 
not thrill with personal elation at power made mani- 
fest ? Or when Madame Melba sings the last long 
note of the first act of ‘ La Boheme ’ ? Or when 
the organist in King’s College Chapel pulls out the 
tubas, making the windows to rattle in their leaded 
panes by the concussion of the astonished air ? 
Or when a perfectly enormous wave rides in from 
the Atlantic, and is transformed suddenly from the 
illustrious blue giant into a myriad cascades of snowy 
white, as, jovially dealing itself its own death, as it 
were, it is dashed against the brown steadfast rock 
of the land ? Or when Legs (I shall speak of him 
soon), as he did to-day, sliced his drive very badly 
at the fourth hole at Woking, and hit the front of the 
engine of an up-train with extraordinary violence, and 
thereupon collapsed on the tee in speechless laughter 
for the sheer joy of the gorgeously improbable feat ? 

For all these things, so I take it, are evidence 
of the splendid energy of things in general in which 
we, each of us, have our share. So that when our 
train goes very fast, or when thunder cracks very 
loudly, or when blue waves are turned to smoke, 
though we are not actually responsible in any way 
for these encouraging facts, which are dependent on 
pressure in a boiler, electricity in the air, and a 
disturbance in mid-Atlantic, yet as by some wireless 
telegraphy, the energy of them is caught in the 
receiver of ourselves, and we throb back to it, feel- 
ing the pulse of life, which is exactly the same life 
in boiler and cloud and wave as that pulse in our- 
13 


A REAPING 


selves, which beats at the wrist. Life ! Life ! Life ! 
All one — all absolutely one ! 

And to-night, too, though not in any of these 
particular ways, how it throbs and beats in this hot 
darkness of June ! For a moment I wished I was 
in the country, to feel the pulse of the woodland and 
the garden. For the green things of the earth are 
awake all June ; they never sleep day or night ; 
they hold their breath sometimes in the hour before 
dawn, and they hang their heads sometimes beneath 
some scurry of summer rain ; but day and night 
their eyes shine ; they are growing and living, and 
are always awake till autumn comes, when they doze, 
and winter comes, when they sleep sound, day and 
night alike, dreaming, perhaps, of the spring, when 
from deep sleep they will slowly awake again, 
aconites first, and soon after daffodils, and then the 
buds of the hawthorn, little green squibs of leaf. . . . 

But I had not gone a hundred yards from the 
doors within which I had dined, when the mysterious 
joy of London summer night smote these thoughts 
of the country into silence. The whole town was 
awake, theatres were pouring out into the streets, 
and boarding the giants of the roadway, the snorting 
smelling motor-buses, their trotting brothers, and 
the inferior cabs and hansoms, where one could be 
alone and not stop on the way, but be taken decor- 
ously and dully to one’s destination. There was 
news, too, in the evening papers — a horrible murder, 
I think it was, but the nature of the incident 
mattered very little. It was incident, anyhow ; 
something had happened. And without wishing 

14 


JUNE 

to know exactly what it was, I felt extraordinarily 
pleased that something had happened. 

The dip of Piccadilly between Devonshire House 
and Hyde Park was comparatively empty, and a 
sudden shudder of the mind came across me. I 
had been sitting next a dear friend, condemned to 
death. How could I have forgotten that, for for- 
gotten it I had, in this riotous summer of London. 
Then I knew why I had forgotten it. It was because 
she had been so superior (an odious word, but there 
is no other) to it herself. That courage, that passion- 
ate interest in the dear things of the world, her 
contempt (for this time there is no need of another 
word) of death, had been infectious. To her it was a 
mere incident of life. * Things in general * were no 
less real and delightful to her because this incident 
was coming close, than they were to me, who had 
not yet, as far as I knew, to look it in the face. 

Yet, after all, to any of the others sitting at that 
table, death, so small an incident to her who had 
steadfastly regarded it, might in reality be closer 
than to her. And she exulted in the things of life 
still : they had lost no interest for her. 

I stopped for a moment at the bottom of the hill, 
as one must when something quite new to oneself 
strikes one. That was the ideal she had shown. 
Fearless, undismayed, full of summer. * And with 
God be the rest.’ 

At Hyde Park Corner a coffee-stall and an ice- 
cream stall jostled each other. Each had its follow- 
ing. But both at the moment seemed to me to be 

15 


A REAPING 


heretical, and instead I turned into the Park to 
walk as far as the Alexandra Gate, whence I had to 
get into Sloane Street. 

It was like coming out of the roar of a tunnel into 
the day again, and one's eyes (though conversely) 
had to get accustomed to the dark after the glare 
and noise of the dear streets. A little wind whis- 
pered overhead in the planes ; a little odour of moist 
earth came from Rotten Row. Quiet, solitary 
figures passed, or figures in pairs, closely linked, 
but for the most part silent. On benches under- 
neath the trees there were pairs of figures. In 
Heaven's name why not ? To flirt, to make love, 
to look into eyes, is an applauded, and rightly 
applauded, pursuit in sequestered corners, under 
palms, beneath the eaves of the staircase, with the 
band blaring from the ball-room just beyond. But 
it doesn’t seem to strike the fastitlious, who write 
letters to papers about the ‘ state ’ of the parks, 
that it is just possible that there are other people 
in the world who haven’t got ball-rooms and palms, 
and marble staircases. What are they to do, then ? 
The answer of these letter-writers is deplorably 
futile, for they talk about indigent marriages ! As 
if you could stop the life of the world by pointing 
with impious hands towards the Savings Bank ! 
God laughs at it ! 

But the people who most call attention to the 
state of the park are those who have sat in the 
back drawing-room with their ‘ gurls,’ while mamma 
has been Grenadier at the door, and papa has put a 
handkerchief over his broad face, when he has 
16 


JUNE 

finished his glass of port after lunch (after lunch !), 
and smokes his cigar in the dining-room. It really 
is so. Young men and maidens may sit on a plush 
sofa in the dreadful back drawing-room and behave 
as young men and maidens should (and if they 
shouldn’t, they will) ; and why in the name of all 
that is decent should they not sit on a bench in the 
Park and kiss each other ? Yet the person who 
objects to their doing so, and who writes to the 
papers in consequence, is exactly the man who, in 
his semi-detached villa at some nameless suburb, 
draws his handkerchief over his face, and obscenely 
snores, while Jack, a respectable bank-clerk, kisses 
Maria in the back drawing-room. Good luck to 
them all, except to the horrible man who snores 
and writes to the papers when he is awake ! He 
would be better snoring. 

The moon had risen and rode high in a star- 
kirtled heaven, making a diaper of light and shifting 
shadow below the shade of the many-elbowed planes. 
Even now, close on midnight, it was extraordinarily 
hot, and for a little the grass and the trees made me 
long again for the true country, where the green 
things on the earth are native, not, as here, out- 
casts in the desert island of the streets. Yet, when 
there is, as in London, so large a colony of castaways, 
extending, you will remember, right down from 
beyond the Serpentine Bridge to Westminster, so 
that, except for the crossing at Hyde Park, one 
may walk on grass for all these solid miles, one 
hopes that the trees and flowers are tolerably 
cheerful, and do not sigh much for the wild~places 

17 B 


A REAPING 


away from houses. Never was there a town so full 
of trees as this, for walk as you may in it, you will, 
I think, with three exceptions only, never find a 
street from some point in which you cannot see a 
tree to remind you of shade at noontide and grassy 
hollows. But the names of those streets shall not 
here be stated ; they must, however, consider 
themselves warned. 

Then the streets again, crowded still with moving 
figures, each an entrancing enigma to any passenger 
whose soul is at all alert, and swift with the passage 
of those glorious motor-buses, pounding and flashing 
along on their riotous ways, the very incarnation 
to me of all that ‘ town * means ! I cannot imagine 
now what London was like without them. It must 
have been but half alive, half itself. It is impos- 
sible to be patient with these curious folk who con- 
sider them nuisances, who say (as if anyone denied 
it) that they both smell and clatter. That is exactly 
why they are so typical of London ; indeed, one is 
disposed to think that they were not made with 
hands, but spontaneously generated out of the 
Spirit of the Town. 

And how delightful to observe their elephantine 
antics if the streets are slippery, when they be- 
have exactly like a drunken man, with appear- 
ance still portentously solemn, as if he had heard 
grave news, but afflicted with strange indecision 
and uncertainty on questions of the direction in 
which he intends to walk. I was on one the other 
day which did the most entrancing things, and had 
it all to myself, as everybody else got down, not 
18 


JUNE 

seeming to see that if a motor-bus has been ‘ over- 
taken ’ it is far safer to be on it than anywhere else 
in the street, just as a drunken man may lurch 
heavily with damage to others, but never hurts 
himself. It was in Piccadilly, too, a beautiful 
theatre for its manoeuvres. Trouble began as we 
descended the hill by the Green Park : it had 
vin gai, and was boisterously cheerful ; but it was 
extraordinarily uncertain about direction, and 
slewed violently once or twice, so that hansoms 
started away from our vicinity as rabbits scuttle 
from you in the brushwood. Then my bus sud- 
denly pulled itself together and walked quite 
straight for a lamp-post by the kerb. It felt tired, 
I suppose, and leaned wearily against it, snapping 
it neatly off with as little effort as it takes to 
pluck a daisy. Then it hooted, moved gravely on 
again, and, thinking it was a member of the Junior 
Athenaeum, made straight for the door. But it 
forgot to lift its feet up to get on to the pavement, 
and stumbled. Then it saw a sister-bus, backed 
away from the pavement, and tried to make friends. 
But the other simply cut it and passed by. So it 
gave a heavy sigh, and began to mount the hill 
towards Devonshire House. But it had scarcely 
gone twenty yards when the behaviour of its sister 
so smote upon its heart that it could not go on, and 
turned slowly round in the street to look back at 
that respectable but uncharitable relation with 
pathetic and appealing eyes. It might happen to 
anybody, it seemed to say, ‘ to take a drop too 
much, and you shouldn’t judge too severely.’ 

19 b 2 


A REAPING 


This sense of being misunderstood gave it vin 
triste of the most pronounced kind. I have seldom 
seen so despondent a drunkard. It moaned and 
muttered to itself, and I longed to console it. But 
beneficent Nature came to its aid : laid her cool 
hand upon its throbbing head, and it slept. I got 
gently off, feeling, as Mr. Rossetti, I think, says 
(if it was not he, it was somebody else), that I must 
step softly, for I was treading on its dreams. 

And all this for a penny, which the conductor 
very obligingly refunded to me, as I had not been 
taken where I wanted to go ! 

Sloane Street, and soon my dear house, into which 
I was towed by my watch-chain. For my latchkey 
was on the end of it, and, having opened the door, 
I could not get the latchkey out, and had to step on 
tiptoe, following the door as it opened. Wild music 
came from the upstairs, and, having disentangled my 
key, I ran up, to find Helen and Legs trying with 
singular ill-success to play the overture to the 
‘ Meistersingers,’ from a performance of which they 
had just returned. They took not the slightest 
notice of my entry. 

* No !’ shouted Legs. * One, two ; wait for two ! 
Oh, do get on ! Yes, that’s it. Sorry ; I thought 
it was a sharp.’ 

They were nearing the end, and several loud and 
unsimultaneous thumps came. 

'I’ve finished,’ said Helen. 

Legs had one thump more. 

* So have 1/ he said. ‘ Isn’t it ripping ?' 

20 


JULY 














JULY 


Helen has gone to church, after several scathing 
remarks about Sabbath-breakers, by whom she 
means me, and probably also Legs, as I hear the 
piano being played indoors. As a matter of fact, 
I have not the slightest intention of breaking any- 
thing — though Legs seems to have designs on the 
strings — for even here under the trees on the lawn 
it is far too hot to think of such a thing. Several 
slightly disappointed dogs repose round me, who 
hoped that perhaps, as I was not going to church, 
I was going for a walk. This afternoon, I am afraid, 
they will be disappointed again, for I purpose to 
go to afternoon service in the cathedral, and they 
will think I am going for a walk. But on Sunday 
dogs have to pay for the commissions and omissions 
of the week. 

The bells have stopped, so Helen will quite cer- 
tainly be late, and the silence of Sunday morning 
in the country grows a shade deeper. Fifi just now, 
with an air of grim determination, sat up to scratch 
herself; but she could not be bothered, and sank 
down again in collapse on the grass. Legs, too, has 
apparently found the heat too much even for him, 
and has stopped playing. And I abandoned myself 
23 


A REAPING 


to that luxury which can only be really enjoyed on 
Sunday morning, when other people have gone to 
church (I wish to state again that I am going this 
afternoon), of thinking of all the things I ought to 
do, and not doing them. On Monday and Tuesday, 
and all through the week, in fact, you can indulge 
in that same pursuit, but it lacks aroma : it is with- 
out bouquet. But give me a chair under a tree on 
Sunday morning, and let my wife call me names for 
sitting in it, and then let the church-bells stop. 
Fifi wants washing. Legs said so yesterday, and 
we meant to wash her this morning. I must care- 
fully avoid the subject if he comes out, since I 
don’t intend to do so. Then I ought to write to 
the Secretary of State — having first ascertained who 
he is — to remind him that Legs is going up for his 
Foreign Office examination in November, and that 
his (the Secretary of State’s) predecessor in the late 
Government promised him a nomination. How 
tiresome these changes of Government are ! One 
would have thought the Conservatives might have 
held on till Legs’ examination. Then I should not 
(i) have to consult Whitaker to find out who the 
present Secretary of State is, and (2) write to him, 
and — probably — (3) find that either I haven’t got 
a Whitaker, or else that it is an old one. This will 
entail expense as well. 

How the silence grew ! I could not even hear 
any bees buzz among the flower-beds, and wondered 
whether bees do no work on Sunday. There was 
not a sound or murmur of them. Probably this is 
quite a new fact in natural history, which has never 
2 4 


JULY 

struck anybody before. It would never have 
struck me if I had gone to church. Then Fifi 
pricked one ear, sat up, and snapped at something. 
It was a winged thing, with a brown body, rather 
like a bee. How indescribably futile ! 

Then there came a little puff of wind from the 
end of the garden, and next moment the whole air 
was redolent with the scent of sweet-peas. Sweet- 
peas ! How strangely, vastly more intimate is the 
sense of smell than any other ! How at one whiff 
of odour the whole romance of life, its beautiful 
joys and scarcely less beautiful sorrows, the dust 
and struggle and the glory of it, rises up, clad not 
in the grey robes, or standing in the dim light of 
the past, but living, moving, breathing — part of 
the past, perhaps, but more truly part of the present. 
Like a huge wave from the immortal sea of life, 
cool and green, and speaking of the eternal depths, 
yet exulting in sunshine and rainbow-hued in 
spray, all the memories entwined about this house 
held and enveloped me. Here lived once Dick and 
Margery, those perfect friends ; here, when they had 
passed to their triumphant peace, came she whom, 
when I first saw her, I thought to be Margery. 
From this house (where still in memory of Margery 
we plant the long avenue of sweet-peas, because she 
loved them) two years ago we were married, and 
here I sit now drowned in the beautiful past that 
is all so essential a part of this beautiful present. 

But it would be as well, perhaps, if this book is 
to be in the slightest degree intelligible (a thing 
which I maintain is a merit rather than a defect), 
25 


A REAPING 

to put together a few simple facts concerning these 
last two years. 

It was two years ago last April that we were 
married, and took a small house in town, though we 
still spent a good deal of time down here with Helen’s 
father. But before the year was out he died, 
leaving everything to Helen, who was his only child. 
So, as was natural, we continued to live in the house 
which was so dear to both of us. 

Legs is my first cousin, and he has lived with us 
for a year past, for he has neither father nor mother ; 
and since he was cramming for his Foreign Office 
work in town, it was far the best arrangement that 
he should make his home with us. Legs is the only 
name he is ever known by, since he is one of those 
people who are almost unknown by their real name 
(which in this case is Francis Horace Allenby), and 
are alluded to only by some nickname which is far 
more suitable. If, for instance, I said to somebody 
who knew him quite well, f Have you seen Francis 
lately ?’ I should probably be favoured with an 
inquiring stare, and then, 4 Oh, Legs, you mean !’ 
while to his million acquaintances (he has more 
than anyone I ever knew) he is equally Legs Allenby. 
The name, I need scarcely add, is a personal and 
descriptive nickname, for Legs chiefly consists of 
them. When he sits down, he would be guessed 
to be well on the short side of middle height ; when 
he stands up he is seen to be well on the farther 
shore of it. He was Legs at school, and his family, 
very sensibly, and all his friends, saw how impossible 
it was to call him Francis any more. For the rest, 
26 


JULY 

he is just over twenty, sandy-haired, freckle-faced, 
and green-eyed, with a front tooth broken across, 
a fact that is continually in evidence, since he is 
nearly always laughing. It would be sheer nonsense 
to call him good-looking, but it would be as sheer to 
call him ugly, since, when you have got a face like 
Legs', either epithet has nothing to do with it. But 
I have never seen any boy with nearly so attractive 
and charming a face, and Legs, whose nature is quite 
as nice as his face, and extremely like it, has the most 
splendid time. 

And that, to finish these tedious explanations, is 
our household. There is no other inmate of it — no 
little one, you understand. 

Legs is an enthusiast — a fanatic on the subject 
of life. Everything, including even his foreign 
; languages, which he has to cram himself with, is 
the subject of his admiration, and he discovers 
more secrets of life than the rest of the world put 
together. At one time it is a chord which is meat 
and drink to him ; at another the romances of 
Pierre Loti ; or, again, golf is the only thing worth 
living for, while occasionally some girl, or, as often 
as not, a respectable elderly married woman, usurps 
his heart. Last week he discovered that there were 
only two people in town the least worth talking to, 
but yesterday, when I asked him who the second 
one was, having forgotten myself, I found that he 
had forgotten too, for if the “ Meistersinger ” overture 
was not enough for anybody, he was a person of no 
perception. 


27 


A REAPING 


' Why, it contains all there is/ he had said, when 
he finished it the other evening with Helen. ‘ It’s 
all there, the whole caboodle/ 

But this morning, from the silence indoors, I 
imagine he must have found another caboodle — 
a book probably. Or equally possible, Legs has an 
attack of acute middle-age, which occasionally 
takes him like a bad cold in the head. Then he 
wonders whether anything is worth doing, and is 
sorry for Helen and me, because we are so frivolous. 
Six months ago, I remember, he had such an attack, 
induced by reading a book about three acres and a 
cow, which raised in him the sense of injustice that 
all of us three had so much more than that. During 
this period he took no sugar in his tea, refused wine, 
and began to write a book which was called ‘ Tramps/ 
contrasting the horror of indigence with the even 
greater horror of extravagance. It was really 
directed against Helen and me, for we had lately 
bought a small, snuffling motor-car. These out- 
bursts of Socialism are generally coincident with 
Atheism. But they do not last long : Legs soon 
feels better again. 

I was right, it appeared, about the conjecture 
that he had found a book, but I was wrong about the 
attack of middle-age. Legs jumped out of the 
drawing-room window with wild excitement. 

‘ Oh, I say !’ he cried, * why did you never tell 
me ? I thought Swinburne was an awful rotter ! 
But just listen/ 

And he read : * When the hounds of spring are in 
winter’s traces/ 


28 


JULY 

' Did you ever hear anything like it ?’ he said. 

Blossom by blossom the spring begins !” Why, 
it’s magic ! Oh, don’t I know it ! Do you remem- 
ber — I suppose you don’t — when all the daffodils 
came out together last year ?’ 

* Oh, Legs, what an ass you are !’ I said. * Because 
you never noticed them till I showed you them.’ 

* No, I believe that’s true. Oh, don’t argue ! 
Listen !’ 

And he began all over again. 

Then he lay back on the grass with his hands 
underneath his head, looking up unblinking into the 
face of the sun. That, by the way, is another 
peculiarity of his : he looks straight at the sun at 
noonday, and is not dazzled. His eyes neither blink 
nor water. He can’t understand why other people 
don’t look at the sun. 

Then — if by any chance you care to understand this 
quiet, delightful life we lead, it is necessary that you 
understand Legs — then his mood suddenly changed. 

' Oh, Tin wrong about the daffodils,’ he said ; 
* you showed me them. But this chap is a daffodil. 
I suppose he’s quite old, too. I wonder how you 
can get old, if you have ever felt like that. What 
a waste of time it is to do anything if you can feel. 
I hate this Foreign Office affair : why shouldn’t I do 
nothing ?’ 

* Because you can’t,’ I remarked. 

‘ What do you mean ?’ 

I had not been to church, and so had heard no 
sermon. Therefore, I preached one on my own 
account. 


29 


A REAPING 


' You will know in about fifteen years/ I said. 
‘ Anyhow, you will find that, unless you are brain- 
less and absurd, you must do something. You are 
quite wrong. It isn’t nearly enough to feel. The 
moment you " feel,” you want to create. You not 
only want, but you have to ; you can’t possibly help 
yourself. You have just read that heavenly poem. 
You now want to write something like it. You 
hear what spring once said to a poet, and you want 
to put down what spring says to you !’ 

‘ Oh, you’re quite wrong,’ said Legs. * He has 
said what spring means. That’s the last word on 
the subject. But summer now : this, to-day ’ 

* So you want to create,’ said I. 

A glorious trait about Legs is that he never admits 
conviction. He only changes the subject. Thus, 
if the subject is changed by him, his controversialist 
is satisfied. 

‘ I don’t believe in the highest of the shortest suit 
if your partner doubles,’ he said. ‘ What are you 
to do if you have two spades and two clubs all 
contemptible ?’ 

* Lead the less contemptible.’ 

Legs turned slowly over on his side, and lay with 
his face against the short turf of the lawn, 4 “ Blos- 
som by blossom,” he said, * “ the spring begins.” 
I wonder if he meant more than that ! Did he 
mean to tell of the time when one is young oneself, 
and it is all blossom ? Lord, how priggish that 
sounds ! But it is all blossom, except for this 
beastly German. I hate German ! It sounds as 
if you were gargling. Damn ! I have to go up by 
30 


JULY 

the early train to-morrow, too ! And you and Helen 
will stop here till after lunch. Grind, grind — oh, 
I lead the life of a dog ! And then, if I am very 
successful, I shall have the privilege of sitting on 
a stool in a beastly building in Whitehall, and 
writing a precis from some silly old man in Vienna 
or Madrid, about nothing at all. It isn’t worth it !’ 

Legs and I, it will be observed, deal largely in 
contradictions. 

‘ Yes, it is/ I said. * Everything almost that one 
does is worth it. As long as you are actively doing 
anything with all your heart, you can’t be wasting 
time, nor can there be anything better worth doing. 
It is only when you say that a thing isn’t worth 
doing that it becomes so.’ 

Legs sat up again. 

‘ Oh, I want nine lives at least !’ he said. * Or 
why can’t one buy some of the time that hangs so 
heavy on other people’s hands ? I know a man 
who reads the Times all through every morning, and 
the Globe every evening. Yet, after all, I dare say 
it is quite as improving as sitting here and talking 
rot as we are doing. I shall go and put in half an 
hour over that accursed Teutonic language before 
lunch.’ 

Legs had, as it seemed to me, run over most of 
the topics of human interest in the few minutes he 
had been out, and since I was still irrevocably 
determined neither to wash Fifi, nor to write to the 
Secretary of State, nor, indeed, to open the very 
large book on the crisis in Russia, which I had 
3i 


A REAPING 


brought out with me (to bring out a book on Sunday 
morning and not to open it is strictly in accordance 
with the spirit of the thing), my mind went slowly 
browsing, like a meditative cow, over the dazzling 
display he had spread before me. And instinctively 
and instantaneously I found myself envying him, 
though why I envied him I did not immediately 
know. But it was soon obvious ; I envied his power 
of making soul-stirring discoveries ; his rapture over 
that magical spring song of the man he had thought 
* an awful rotter.’ I envied him his ignorance of 
the perfectly patent fact that it is only fools who 
can go on doing nothing, and of the fact that it is 
infinitely better to sit on a stool and do arithmetic 
for stockbrokers than to do nothing at all. But 
youth does not know that, and I think I envied him 
his youth. Yet — so often does one contradict 
oneself — I knew very soon that I did not envy him 
any of these things. After all, I still went on making 
soul-stirring discoveries, and propose to do so until 
the very end of my life, when I shall make the most 
soul-stirring discovery of all, which is death. And 
to envy the fact of his having just discovered the 
magic of Swinburne’s spring song would be exactly 
the same as envying the appetite of somebody who 
has just come down to breakfast, when you are half- 
way through. Your eggs and bacon were' delicious, 
but the fact that you have eaten them makes it 
impossible to wish for them again. And it should 
make you only delighted that other people keep 
coming down to breakfast — till the end of your life 
they will do that, unless the world comes to an end 
32 


JULY 

first — and, thank God, they will find eggs and bacon 
delicious too, hungry and fresh in the morning of 
their lives. 

I was becoming slightly too active in mind for the 
proper observance of Sunday morning (given, of 
course, that you have chosen not to go to church), 
for the real attitude is a state of tranquil bemused- 
ness, but it was too late to stop now. . . . What, in 
fact, did I want ? Did I want to be twenty again, 
and go through the days and hours of those fifteen 
years once more ? 

Yes, I did. If the world could be turned back for 
fifteen years, I would gladly take my place there, 
and go through it all, good and bad together, just 
as it has happened. 1 would encore this delightful 
song, in fact, and be content that it should be sung 
again — it, not another song. Of course, if one could 
start again at the age of twenty — or ten, for that 
matter — and live it over again with the knowledge, 
infinitesimal as it is, that one has gained now, I 
imagine that the vast majority of the world would 
put the hands of the clock back. On all those j 
thousands of occasions on which one has acted 1 
stupidly, unkindly, evilly, and has probably suffered 
for it without delay (for it is mercifully ordained 
that we have not long to wait before our punishment 
begins,' especially if we have been foolish), we should 
now do differently, remembering that it did not pay 
— to put things at their lowest — to be asses and 
knaves. Apart from that, we should have the same 
beautiful, flawless days again, when, so I cannot but 
think, the beneficent power has somehow come very 
33 c 


A REAPING 


close to us and our surroundings, and by its neigh- 
bourhood has given us a series, again and again 
repeated, of hours in which we have been unable to 
imagine anything better than what we have got. 
We have wanted, with all the eager happiness that 
wanting gives, and we have obtained ; but before 
any leanness of the soul has entered we have wanted 
again. We have had happiness, not content (since 
that implies the end of wanting) but happiness, the 
content that dwells not in the present only, but 
looked forward. I have no idea whether, on the 
whole, I am happier than the average of other 
people, since there is no thermometer yet invented 
that can register that. But 1 do know that I would 
choose to go back and live it all over again, as it 
has been. With the little experience, the little 
knowledge that must inevitably come with years, 
whether one is stupid or not, I imagine that every- 
body would choose to go back, but I wish to state 
distinctly that I would go back without that. I 
suppose it was that which made me just now feel I 
envied Legs. But I don’t do that really for this 
reason. 

Supposing that what I should choose (because I 
really should) were given me, what then ? I should 
arrive again eventually in the mere measure of years 
at the point where I am now, no different, no better, 
no worse. I should like to go back, because it has 
been such fun. But there is better than that ahead : 
of thlt I am completely convinced. There are as 
many (if not more, and I think there are more) 
entrancing discoveries from middle age as there have 
34 


JULY 

been from youth, and I am convinced again that if 
one happens to live to be old there will be as many 
more. 

After all, to re-read life again would be like re- 
reading the first volume of an absorbing book. 
One has revelled in the first volume, and naturally 
wants to revel again. But what is going to happen ? 
There is nothing that interests me so much as that. 
To-day, even in this quiet domestic life of ours, 
there are a hundred threads leading out into unknown 
countries, all of which, if one lives, one will follow 
up. And all, big and tiny alike, are so stupendous. 
If, to take the forward view, I could see in a mirror 
now what and where all those people — few of them, 
no doubt, but friends — those who really matter, 
would be in a year’s time, how I should seize the 
magic reflector, and gaze into it ! Incomparable as 
has been the romance of life up till now, it is known 
to me. But to peep into the second volume ! 

The sun, in the full blaze of which Legs had laid, 
peeped over the top of the elm in shade of which I 
had seated myself, and, not being Leggish, I shifted 
my chair again to consider this point. 

It is a question of scale that is here concerned, 
though the scale seems to me to be an unreal 
one. If I happened to be the Emperor of All the 
Russias, and the magic mirror were given me, I 
should look eagerly out for my own figure, and see 
if I still wore a crown. I should scrutinize the 
faces of those around me, to see if war and the hell- 
hag of revolution had been shrieking through my 
illimitable country. But my interests are not soul- 
35 c 2 


A REAPING 


stirring to any but me, and anyhow not of European 
importance. So I should look to see who sat on 
this lawn a year hence ; I should ask for a short 
survey of the Embassy at Paris, to see if Legs was 
attached ; I should visit a dozen houses or so. But 
if I was allowed to put the clock back fifteen years, 
I should have to wait longer for this. ... So I must 
reconsider my choice, and I am afraid I must reverse 
it. But it must be understood that I choose not 
to be twenty again, merely because it will take longer 
to be forty and fifty. I want the second volume so 
much. 

* Or . . .’ Here Helen’s voice broke in. She had 
come back from church, and had seated herself on 
the grass, and I believe that half of what appeared 
to be soliloquy was actually spoken to her. But she 
is wonderfully patient. 

‘ It is youth you want/ she said, ‘ and you have 
got it till you cease to want it. It is only people 
who don’t care about it that grow old. Or is there 
more than that ? Is it wanting to go on learning 
that keeps one young ?’ 

A dreadful misgiving came over me. 

‘ Am I dreaming ?’ I said. ' Or did you tell me 
the other day that I showed signs of wishing to 
teach ?’ 

She laughed. 

‘ No ; it is quite true. But I will tell you when 
you cease to wish to learn. I shall say it quite, 
quite clearly.’ 

She took off her hat, and speared it absently with 
a pin. 


36 


JULY 

* We had an awful sermon/ she said, ‘ all about 
the grim seriousness of life, and the opportunities 
that will never come back. It does seem to me it is 
most absolute waste of time to give a thought to 
that. I shan’t go to church next Sunday. I don’t 
feel fortified by thoughts like that. It’s much 
better for me to know that you would put the clock 
back, and live it all over again. But about looking 
forward. Oh, Jack, I think I shouldn’t look in the 
magic mirror if I had the chance. What if one 
saw oneself all alone ? One would live in dread 
afterwards.” 

‘ Or what if you saw a cradle in the room ?’ said I. 

She looked up at me quickly, and then put out 
her hands for me to pull her up. 

‘ Perhaps I should look in the mirror,’ she said. 

Poor Legs, as he had said, left by a very early 
train next morning, and Helen, moved by a sudden 
violent attack of vague duty, went with him. The 
access was quite indeterminate. She thought merely 
that one ought to get back to town early on Monday, 
so as to have the whole day there instead of split- 
ting it up. Personally I followed neither her reason- 
ing nor her example, and intended to spend the 
day in dignified inaction in the country, and not 
split it up by going to town till after dinner. But 
to the owner of a motor-car the train appears a 
degraded sort of business, and, greatly daring, I 
meant to start about nine in the evening, and be 
the monarch of the road ; for when there is no other 
traffic, any car becomes a chariot of triumph. 

37 


A REAPING 


Helen, I may remark, loves our motor when she 
does not want to go anywhere particular. When 
she does she takes the train. I think, in fact, that 
it was my proposal that we should drive up together 
after dinner that was the direct parent of her sense 
of duty. 

So, when I came down at the not unreasonable 
hour of nine to breakfast, I found that I had the 
house to myself, and — I am not in the least ashamed 
of the confession — found that the prospect of an 
absolutely solitary day was quite to my mind. I 
do not believe myself to be unsociable or morose, 
but every now and then I confess that I like a day 
in which I see nobody. It is not that one is busy, and 
wants to get through one’s work, for, on the contrary, 
when I have a great deal to do, I hugely desire the 
presence and the conversation of friends in the 
intervals of ‘ doing.’ But occasionally it is a very 
good thing to chew and ruminate, to be surrounded 
by the quiet green things of the earth, which give 
you all their best without waking the corresponding 
instinct to exchange ideas, to give something of yours 
to meet theirs. For intercourse with one’s fellow- 
men, especially with one’s friends, is like some rapid 
interchange of presents. Everybody (everybody, 
at least, who has the smallest sense of sociability) 
searches in his mind for any little thing that may 
be there, and gives it his friend, while the friend, 
accepting it, gives something back. From all that — 
we cannot call it an effort since it is so completely 
spontaneous on both sides — it is well to be free 
38 


JULY 

occasionally, to lie, so to speak, under the pelting 
rain of life that is ever poured out from the voice- 
less, eloquent, bright-eyed happiness of Nature, 
to make no plan, to contemplate no contingency, 
to drop that sort of fencing rapier that we all wield 
when we are with our fellow-men, and lie like a log, 
with one eye open it may be, and be rained upon 
by the things that live, and are clothed and nourished 
without toil or spinning. 

I am aware that the great Strenuists, from Mr. 
Roosevelt downwards, would hold up their toil- 
hardened hands at this, exclaiming : * You mean it 
is better now and then to be a cow than a Man ? 
Precisely so, but cows are not nearly as inactive as 
Man on these occasions ought to be. They eat too 
long, and they switch their tails, and stamp their 
feet. But the long, stupid, bovine gaze is moder- 
ately correct. At least, I have never detected a 
shadow of intelligence in a cow’s eye. If there is 
any, the man who occasionally becomes a cow must 
be careful to get rid of it. Nor must he be a cow 
too often : that is fatal. If he is a cow for one day 
in every six weeks, I think he will find the proportion 
is about right. 

So all day, literally all day, I sat, or, when sitting 
became too fatiguing, lay on the lawn, and nothing 
happened that did not always happen, but all was 
worth observing in a purely bovine manner, without 
intelligence. Little brown twigs occasionally fell 
from the elms, and once or twice a withered yellow 
leaf came spinning on its own axis, as if it was the 
screw of some unseen steamer. A stag-beetle 
39 


A REAPING 


walked slowly down from the wooden paling, and 
came some ten yards across the lawn. It stopped 
there about an hour, I should think, doing nothing 
whatever. Then it turned and went back on to the 
paling again. A robin took about the same length 
of time to make up his mind that I was quite harm- 
less, and eventually pecked at my bootlace, which 
was undone. It took him an enormous time to 
decide, with his head cocked sideways, whether it 
had tasted nice or not, but eventually he settled 
it did not, for he did not peck it again. Then a 
jackdaw sat on one of the poles of the tennis-net, 
and said ‘ Jarck ' seventeen times after I began to 
count. He began to say it the eighteenth time, 
but stopped in the middle and ate an incautious 
earwig. 

That was almost too exciting, and I transferred 
not my attention, because I had not got any, but 
my bovine gaze to the big flower-bed opposite. All 
summer was there, dim, hot, blossoming summer in full 
luxuriance of growth, so that scarcely a square inch 
of earth was visible. I did not even name the dear 
familiar flowers that grew there. One was a spire 
of blue, one was a cluster of orange ; there was an 
orchestra of red trumpets, a mist of starry grey, and 
bits of sky caught in a web of green. And from 
beyond (I could not help naming that) came the 
odour of sweet-peas. I lay and soaked in it. 

To use a simile, do you know those mysterious 
things which are to be found on the chalk downs, 
called dew-ponds ? Often, of course, they are fed 

40 


JULY 

with rain, but even when for months no rain has 
fallen, you will still find them full. They just lie 
open to the sky, and that is all. And the mind, so 
it seems to me, is something like them. Often it is 
fed in the obvious way, as the dew-pond with rain, by 
conscious thought, by active intercourse with others. 
But sometimes it is not a bad thing for it to be like 
the dew-pond, just to lie open to the sky, and drink 
in the eternal wine of Nature, which fills its pond 
again. All that is required of it is to do nothing 
whatever, not to think even, but just to be there, 
to be in existence, to let go of everything. It 
really is worth the experiment, though it is not 
quite so easy as it sounds, for thoughts, ideas of 
some kind, keep leaking in. They must be firmly 
excluded. 

The snuffling motor rose like a hero to the occasion, 
and came round throbbing with excitement. Some- 
thing in the idea of this drive by night had evidently 
taken its fancy, and it positively burned to exceed 
the legal limit, a wish that I was only too glad to 
gratify. When we started the crimson of the sunset 
was still aflame in the west, but gradually the 
colour was withdrawn, as if some unseen hand was 
pulling out scarlet threads that ran through some 
exquisite fabric of dainty embroidery, leaving there 
only the soft transparent ground of it. Then more 
gradually, so that the eye could not trace the 
appearance of each, but only knew that the number 
was being multiplied, behind the dark velvet of the 
sky were lit the myriad suns that make a flame of 
4 1 


A REAPING 


space, and sing in their orbits. Colours faded and 
disappeared, and soon the world was turned to an 
etching of black and white. The roads were empty 
of traffic, and though July was here, still from dark 
coppice and leafy screen there sounded the one 
eternal song, the rapture of nightingales. Often it 
seemed to me as if we were standing still, while the 
world in its revolution span by us ; there was but a 
space of lamp-lit road by which, shadow-like, 
dream-like, the trees and open spaces ran. For a 
long piece together, as over the Hartford Bridge flats, 
nothing marked our passage except this whirling 
of the world. It seemed in the darkness that time 
had ceased, and that from its own impetus this globe 
and the thousand globes above were circling still. 

Then in front there began to shine, like the 
reflected light of some comet coming nearer, the 
huge glow-worm of London. For a while it rested, 
like some remote befogged star on the horizon ; 
then its light brightened, and its little crawling 
caterpillars, the trams and buses, began to creep 
by us, reaching out, as it were, to the end of the leaf, 
the greenest and most succulent parts. 

Then, like the opening of a photographer’s 
shutter, so swift it was, we were in the traffic of the 
town again, and all was familiar, all was home. 
The country was home too, and here was another. 
Which was the truer sense ? The sense that claimed 
the jackdaw on the tennis-net as a brother, or the 
sense that rejoiced in this fierce-beating pulse of life ? 

Perhaps, since they are both true, there is no 
question of comparison. 


42 


• ' 

AUGUST 




43 










AUGUST 

Something of the primeval savage blood still beats 
in us, we must suppose, else why is it that we, 
effete inhabitants of London, who love the closeness 
and proximity of our fellow-men so much, feel no 
less keenly the rapture of being miles and miles 
away from railways and the folk who travel on 
them ? How quick, too, is the transition from one 
mood to another, so that while a week or two ago we 
rushed insanely, it may be, but with extraordinary 
pleasure, from party to party, jabbering with child- 
like delight to myriad acquaintances, face to face 
on a blocked staircase, or in the drawing-room un- 
willingly silent while somebody sang, we now take 
the same childlike pleasure in long days of solitude. 
But we may take our solitude in pairs, in company 
with a friend who for the time being is no friend at 
all, but a bitter (and, it is to be hoped, disappointed) 
golfer, or we may lie out all day in the heather 
with a silent stalker, or, as has been my fortunate 
lot for the last ten days, may spend long hours, 
with a sandwich and a fishing-rod and a gillie, in 
angling over coffee-coloured streams or windswept 
lochs. 


45 


A REAPING 


The oldest inhabitants never remember anything 
like this summer, but they are bad evidence, because 
their memories are probably very defective owing 
to their age ; but, what is more convincing, younger 
people, whose memories are less impaired, never 
remember anything like it. So there has been little 
of the coffee-coloured streams for me personally, 
but, instead, long quiet days by this wonderful 
loch, supposed to hold trout of fabulous dimensions, 
which, as far as I can make out, nobody has ever 
caught, though everyone agrees that they are there. 
Then came a wonderful day, with more than trout- 
wonder in it. 

I came up here to this remote lodge alone, for the 
trio of us usually go our own ways in holiday time. 
Legs, in any case, had to go to Germany to learn that 
classic and guttural tongue, and Helen and I always 
make visiting arrangements independently of each 
other, unless we are both bidden to a house to which 
we both want to go. But it stands to reason, so it 
seemed to us, that husband and wife probably do 
not have the same friends, and it is as absurd for 
her to stay at a house because the host is a great 
friend of mine as it is for me to stay at a house 
because the hostess is a great friend of hers. Coinci- 
dences sometimes happen, in which case we both go 
together. Otherwise we make our own arrange- 
ments. I cannot bear some of her friends ; she finds 
it almost impossible to tolerate some of mine. And 
with shouts of laughter we agree to differ. Then in 
September or October the trio will come together 
again, and will all talk at once, describing simul- 
46 


AUGUST 

taneously, while nobody listens, our delightful 
adventures. 

I started from the lodge that morning after an 
early breakfast, the gillie having already gone on 
with lunch, and what we hoped would be the 
apparatus of death; for, the first time during this 
last week, it was a soft and cloudy morning, with a 
warm wind from the south-west, sufficient even in 
this cup of the hills, where the lodge stands, to set 
the trees tossing their branches, and to strip the 
red ripe rowan-berries from their stalks. Upon the 
unsheltered tops, then, where lay the dark-coloured 
loch with its fabled inhabitants, there should be 
ripple enough for fishing purposes. I walked un- 
encumbered but for the field-glasses I always carry ; 
for nothing, during periods of waiting or in the half- 
hour that follows the sandwich, is so fascinating as 
to spy out the busy animal life on these empty moors, 
or find some three or four miles away two or three 
little human specks moving very gently up the hill- 
side after the deer, or sitting there patiently till 
some untoward affair, suspicious hinds, or a foul 
wind are lulled into inactivity. 

But first I had a mile of pine-wood to climb, up 
steep, slippery, needle-strewn paths, with bracken 
already yellowing on each side, making a sea of 
russet and green, while from overhead, in the thick 
arching boughs, there came, as it were, the noise of 
an aerial sea, the hiss of ripples on a sandy shore as 
the wind whistled through the stiff springy foliage. 
Now and then a rabbit scuttled through the ferns, 
and once I saw quite close at hand a roe-deer with 
47 


A REAPING 




flicking ears and startled eyes, that, as it caught 
sight of me, gave me one shy look of the woodland, 
and then galloped off, cutting its way through the, 
tall bracken. The path sometimes led by the side 
of the stream that came out of the loch to which I 
was bound, but the dryness of the summer had : 
hushed its voice, and it but trickled down the ways 
it was wont to prance along in spring. Here and 
there a tree of the tamer woodland, a beech, or 
stripling elm, grew among the primeval firs, but it 
looked as if it had wandered here by mistake, had 
strayed, a member of some later civilization, into a 
settlement peopled by those of the older world. 

And as I walked something of the same feeling i 
of strangeness, of having gone back to the earlier ij 
ages of the world, came over me also. Like the lost j 
beech, there were none of my kind here, and I felt, ! 
though in an immeasurably greater degree, what one 
feels when one stands in the valley of the tombs of I 
the Egyptian Kings. But all round me here were 
things far more ancient than they. ^Eons before j 
Pharaoh oppressed the children of promise there ! 
stood here on this hillside the ancestors in direct line 
of this woodland. The knowledge of the dawn of 
the world, when it was still but a little time since 
God had bidden the green things to live upon the 
earth, had been transmitted to these citizens of the 
hillside, and to them time had been but a little 
thing, and a thousand ages were but as yesterday. 

As I ascended further and more remotely into the 
heart of the wood, a sort of eager tremor, a desire to 
48 


AUGUST 


see that which I knew was there, and which must 
be so overpowering in its immensity, began to grow 
on me. Wild silent life bubbled and hummed 
round me ; eyes watched me from beneath the fern, 
and looked down on me from the over-arching fans 
of the pines ; ears were pricked at my footstep ; 
strange wild smiles broadened into a laugh at the 
intruder, at this child of immeasurably later ages. 
Sometimes it seemed to me as if this ancient con- 
sciousness of the woods was scornful and con- 
temptuous, so that I quickened my pace and longed 
to get out of this dark room ; at other moments, and 
truer ones, I knew better, knowing that I, too, was 
of it all, a manifestation of life, a piece of the pine- 
woods and brother of the bracken. 

There is no myth that grew so close to the heart of 
things as the story of Pan, for it implies the central 
fact of all, the one fact that is so indisputably true, 
that all the perverted ingenuity of man has been 
unable to split into various creeds about it. For 
Pan is All, and to see Pan or to hear him playing on 
his pipes means to have the whole truth of the 
world and the stars, and Him who, as if by a 
twisting thumb and finger, set them endlessly 
spinning through infinite Space, suddenly made 
manifest. Flesh and blood, as the saying is, could 
not stand that, and there must be a bursting of the 
mortal envelope. Yet that, indisputably also, is 
but the cracking of the chrysalis. How we shall 
stand, weak-eyed still and quivering, when trans- 
ported from the dusk in which we have lived this 
little life, into the full radiance of the eternal day ! 

49 n 


A REAPING 


How shall our eyes gain strength and our wings 
expansion and completeness, when the sun of which 
we have seen but the reflection and image is revealed ! 
That is to see Pan. It killed the mortal body of 
Psyche — the soul — when she saw him on the hill- 
top by the river, and heard the notes of his reed float 
down to her ; but she and every soul who has burst 
the flimsy barrier of death into life joins in his music, 
and every day makes it the more compelling. 
Drop by drop the ocean of life, made up of the lives 
that have been, rises in the bowl in which God dips 
His hands. He touches every drop. 

The wood in front had grown thin, and I was nearly 
out on the open heather of the hills. Just here the 
path crossed the stream bed ; a great grey cliff of 
rock was above me, in which a pattern of lichens had 
found crevices for their roots ; the pine-trees waved 
solemnly overhead ; the miracle of running water, 
perhaps the greatest miracle of all, chuckled and 
eddied as it slid into the brown pool. And quite 
seriously I waited to see Pan. The ferns would be 
pushed aside, and the merry face would smile at 
me (for Pan, though he kills you, is kind), and he 
would put his pipes to his lips, and the world, as I 
had hitherto seen it, would swim away from me. 
And just before he puts his pipes to his mouth, I 
hope I shall say : 'Yes, begin ; I am ready !’ Or 
shall I stop my ears, and shut my eyes to him ? 1 

hope not. But the fern waved only, and the water 
ran, and . . . and I was going a-fishing. 

I suppose I had not gone more than a hundred 
50 


AUGUST 


yards after this pause when execrable events 
occurred. It seemed as if some dreadful celestial 
housemaid suddenly woke up, and went on with her 
work. She shut the window (that is to say, the 
wind dropped), and began to dust. She dusted all 
the clouds away, and in ten minutes there was not 
one left. From horizon to horizon there was a sky 
positively Egyptian, and an abominable sun shone 
with hooligan ferocity. And I was going a-fishing ! 
I said what I should not say with such extraordinary 
distinctness and emphasis that I rapidly took out 
my field-glass, and swept the untenanted fields of 
heather to see that there was no one within a mile 
or two. But I expect the roe-deer heard. 

Sandy was waiting for me at the near end of the 
loch, when I arrived there a quarter of an hour 
afterwards. Scotchmen are never cynical, but I 
should otherwise have suspected him of cynicism 
when I saw that he had been at pains to set up my 
rod, and was soaking a length of gut. The brilliance 
of the sun from the polished and untarnished field of 
water was a thing to make the eyes dazzle. So I was 
cynical in turn, and, from pure cynicism and nothing 
else at all, I put on (for the sake of the curious) an 
astonishing fly, with a green body bound with silver, 
and a Zulu. It was a shade too cynical to go out in 
the boat, for I think Sandy would have seen through 
that, as it was impossible that any fish should rise at 
anything in this state of affairs, and I fished from 
the shore. Fishing at all was an idiotic proceeding, 
and so the incredible happened. I wish to call 
51 d 2 


A REAPING 

attention to the incredibility of it, since it happens 
to be true. 

Here was I, then, on a still and windless morning, 
with a blazing sun overhead, and a looking-glass loch 
in which were supposed to be monstrous fish, whose 
shyness apparently increased in ratio to their weight, 
for nobody had ever seen them before, but had only 
heard about them second-hand, like ghost stories. 
Half a dozen casts carried out a convenient length 
of line, which fell, so it appeared to me, on the 
glassy surface of the water like the cane of an angry 
schoolmaster, resonant and cruel. Then at the end 
of the cane, where the Zulu was, there came a boil 
just underneath the looking-glass ; my rod bent, and 
the reel screamed. For one moment I knew, so I 
thought (for the boil came just as I was preparing 
to cast again) , that I had hooked some stalwart weed, 
or perhaps a snag of tree-trunk. Then I knew I had 
hooked a fish. He was clearly insane to have taken 
a fly at all, but what mattered was that he was a 
large lunatic. I thought I knew also that this was 
but the first act of what would turn out to be a 
tragedy. But the tragedy was not for me. 

Again, for the sake of the curious, I will give his 
weight. He turned the scale at five pounds some 
six hours later. So I imagine he was about five and 
a half when he came out of the water with the Zulu 
in his mouth. He was mad ; he turned a fierce 
Bedlamite eye on me. 

I dare say I am more impatient than the true 
fisherman, but when I have cast my fly upon the 
52 


AUGUST 


waters for three hours without a hint of a rise, I sit 
down, and do not feel it incumbent on me to rise 
again unless conditions change. So when, at about 
two o’clock, nothing further had broken the surface 
of the loch except the cane of the schoolmaster, I 
felt, after eating my sandwich, that I was not 
unlikely, without incurring the contempt of Sandy, 
to prolong the interval. I wanted also, after my 
mis-tryst with Pan that morning, vaguely also, 
after that day of bovine observance of Nature which 
I had spent a week or two ago in the garden at home, 
to * sit up and take notice.’ Instead of nirvanic 
contemplation, I wanted to focus all that surrounded 
me, not to see a stag-beetle advance ten yards, and 
then go back to the place he advanced from, but to 
see the activity of it all, to be alert and to collect, 
not to be lazy and to soak. 

Yes ; it was a wonderful day. Almost immedi- 
ately I spied two little human figures on the adjoining 
forest creeping, creeping up a steep brae. A mile 
below I saw their ponies. They moved so slowly 
that it was only possible to see they moved at all, 
because they passed out of the field of my glass ; 
the deer I could not find. 

Then, after watching them for ten minutes more, 
I saw they stopped. Stealthy movements went on. 
Then came the sharp crack of a rifle, but before the 
report reached me they had both jumped up, and 
ran into a hollow of the hills, where I lost them. It 
was like being at sea, and having news twitched out 
from the receiver of a Marconi apparatus. 

But hardly had that drama been played to its 
53 


A REAPING 


curtain when another started. The call of a startled 
grouse, * Come back, come back, come back !’ 
sounded close at hand, and it was followed by an- 
other and yet another. Sandy had remained by 
the edge of the loch when I climbed this hillock for 
my lunch, and since then I had been very quiet, so 
I could not imagine what had caused this com- 
motion on the hill, as the stalkers were not on this 
beat at all to-day. I could account, in fact, for the 
movements of any human being that could have 
disturbed grouse for a mile or two. Then I looked 
up to the enormous sky, and saw. 

Above me, but close, so that I could see the out- 
spread feathers of the wing, was a golden eagle. As 
I watched I saw he was not vaguely circling, looking 
out for prey, but employed in his stalk, even as on 
the other side of the valley ten minutes ago I had 
watched another stalk. He was sweeping wide 
circles of the moor, and driving up towards a gully 
of the hills behind the fowls of the mountain, flying 
in low and ever narrowing semicircles, so that it 
must seem to the terrified grouse and black game 
that huge-winged danger threatened from every 
quarter but that. Yet still I could not guess what 
his plan was when he had driven them there. 

And then I saw. Straight down from the grey 
crag of cliff that rose on the west of this gulley, into 
which he had driven the birds, there dropped his 
mate, savage and hungry, seeking her meat from 
God. Aha, you grand Mistress Eagle ; it is dinner- 
time ! 

Merrily and well has the old cock-grouse lived in 
54 


AUGUST 


the heather, lying warm in the sun, and filling him- 
self with the good things of the moorland, but to-day 
Pan sends him to your table, and in the swift hissing 
down-rush of your wings he hears his pipes. Pan 
will play them for you, too, some day, and the grey 
film will cover over your fierce yellow eye that was 
wont undazzled to behold the sun in his strength, 
and the strong hooked beak which gasped for one 
breath more of the aromatic moorland air will close, 
and be hungry no more, and the crooked, horny 
talon will relax, and next year, maybe, I shall find 
whitened bones on the hillside, and perhaps, 
crumpled up under them, a feather, an eagle's 
feather. But I shall not be so foolish as to say I 
have found you, for do I imagine that that is all 
there is of you, that your life, your spirit, has been 
blown out like a candle ? I know better than 
that. 

For, indeed, there is no other explanation possible 
of the incessant war, the death, the murder, the 
butchery in which Nature's fair hands are steeped 
and stained, except by this one supposition that the 
spirit of bird and beast escapes at the moment of 
death from the splendid sunlit prison of this beautiful 
world, which has the bright-eyed hours for its bars. 
Otherwise the world becomes a mere intolerable 
shambles, viler than Chicago. I at any rate cannot 
believe otherwise, but should any sceptical reader 
at this point ask me to sketch out for him the subse- 
quent movements of the wasp he has just squashed 
in the tongs, or the trout I have just landed, I hasten 
to assure him that I have not the slightest idea about 
55 


A REAPING 


them. But that does not invalidate the explanation, 
nor in the least disturb my complete belief in it. I 
do not know what the weather will be this day year. 
But I make no manner of doubt that there will be 
weather of some kind. I only insist that he with his 
tongs, and I with my Zulu-fly, cannot destroy life. 
One cannot even destroy matter ; how much less, 

then, the lord and master of matter ! 

I think I have never been in a house where absurd 
gaiety — the gaiety of friends, of health, of outdoor 
spirits — was so rampant as here ; and she whose 
house it was, and who was leader of the ludicrous, 
was she, as you may have guessed, who in June had 
asked me to come here for the last time. That 
evening when I got home I found her sitting out in 
the garden enjoying the last half-hour of sunset, 
and she beckoned to me across the lawn. 

' It’s true,’ I said. * I have caught the original 
trout. He had gone mad from old age and riotous 
living, and came to the fly when the sun was 
brightest and the winds were dead.’ 

* I wish you wouldn’t use such beautiful 
language,’ she said. ‘ How much does he weigh ?’ 

‘ About a ton. He has gone to be weighed now.’ 

‘ And anything else ?’ 

‘ Not a fin. No more bites, as somebody said 
last night. I chattered with rage.’ 

‘ You did ; and what have you been thinking 
about ?’ she asked. 

‘ Pan chiefly. No, to be honest, I think I have 
thought about the fish most. But Pan next !’ 

56 


AUGUST 


She turned rather slowly on her long wicker-couch, 
the tired aching body for the moment usurping the 
use of her eyes. 

‘ Ah, don’t let us talk,’ I said ; ‘ you are tired and 
suffering.’ 

At that she laughed. 

‘ All the more reason for thinking about some- 
thing less inferior than one’s own health,’ she said. 
* What cowards we are nowadays ! Why, our fore- 
bears in Elizabeth’s time used to go smiling to the 
rack for the sake of some small difference of dogma, 
and we snivel when we have the opportunity of 
showing, by our contempt for pain, the truth of 
things that matter much more. If bravery in the 
abstract and cheerfulness are not worth being brave 
and cheerful for, I don’t know what is. In any case, 
what conclusion did you come to about Pan ? 
Oddly enough, I have been thinking of him, too. 
Let’s compare notes, and see if we mean the same 
person.’ 

I told her more or less what I have already written 
down on the subject, and at the end she nodded at 
me with the quick eager gesture that was so 
characteristic of her. 

' Hurrah !’ she said. * I have guessed the same. 
So perhaps our guesses are right. But I put it to 
myself rather more personally, and, though it sounds 
conceited, so much more vividly than you. That is 
only natural, you know ; Pan concerns me much 
more immediately than he concerns you, we hope. 
And another image of him suggested itself to me, 
57 


A REAPING 


which appeals to me more than your figure of the 
ferns being pushed aside, and the hand with the 
pipes in it being raised to the smiling lips. Listen !’ 

The sun had dropped behind the big trees to the 
west of the lawn, leaving us in shadow, though it 
still shone on the hills to the east of the house. But 
evening was coming without any chill or whisper of 
autumn in it, and in this northern latitude nights 
were short in August. It was as if she already saw 
dawn. 

* Jim and I and our children,’ she said, ' and 
you and all my friends are shipwrecked, or so 
it would seem to anyone who did not understand, 
on a little rock surrounded by infinite sea. Every- 
one alive in the world is there, too, as a matter of 
fact, but our friends somehow are so big to us, and 
strangers and acquaintances so small in comparison 
that all that really is seen by us is our own im- 
mediate circle. Huge thumping seas surround our 
rock, and, for some occult reason, we all have to sit 
exactly where we are, while the waves rush up, and 
every moment sweep somebody away. We can’t 
move our places, and go higher up on the rock, and 
we have to sit and look at the big waves, we poor 
shipwrecked people (so a man who does not under- 
stand would say), and know that this wave or the 
next will wash us off. That is the ignorant view of 
the situation, and the most pessimistic, so we will 
answer it at once. 

* Even if it was right, what then ? Supposing 
we were shipwrecked, and all round us was the 

58 


AUGUST 


howling sea of death, would it not be much better, 
until the wave swept us off, to make the best of it, 
to talk, and laugh, and be pleasant with our friends, 
instead of looking with terror-stricken eyes at the 
hungry sea ? How much nicer even for ourselves 
to be amused and talk a little while, instead of being 
frightened, and how much nicer for our friends when 
we are swept off, as we all certainly shall be, to know 
that before we were swept off we were moderately 
cheerful, and picked up bits of seaweed, and played 
with shells ! I say nothing of the moral aspect of 
it all, because if you once bring that in there is no 
question any more about the matter, since in one 
case we are brave, and in the other merely cowardly. 
But given that we are shipwrecked, that the sea of 
hungry death surrounds us, and will soon pick us off, 
how much better, on the lowest possible view of the 
affair, to play about, to be kind and gentle, even if 
to-morrow there will be an end of us, utterly and 
for ever ! 

4 Yes, I am using beautiful language too. But I 
am talking of beautiful things. 

‘ Well, that view is the silliest and most incompre- 
hensible possible. How did we get on this absurd 
rock, if only death surrounds us ? Did we come 
from death into life ? That is impossible, since 
scientifically you can’t produce life out of dead 
things. Or did some ship founder on the sea of 
death, and did we swim to shore, where we shall live 
until a wave sweeps us off again ? That is possible ; 
but, then, what was that ship on which we once were 
passengers, that for a time anyhow, until it foun- 
59 


A REAPING 


dered, if it did founder, rode over these waves ? 
That is a serious question, but there is only one 
answer to it. The ship must have been life in some 
form. But the image does not seem convincing, 
does it ? 

‘ What is left, then ? Only this, that the sea 
which surrounds us on our little rock is not death at 
all, but life. Just as some day without doubt a 
wave will sweep us off our rock again, so there is no 
doubt that once a wave of that sea put us on the 
rock where you and I now are. If there is a wreck 
at all, it is a land-wreck, a wreck that puts us on 
shore. From the great sea of life we have been 
washed up for a little moment on to our little 
rock. Soon we shall be received back into life 
again ! 

‘ In the interval, though in a new sense we are 
wrecked, how interesting is our rock, and how full 
of dear people, and pink shells, and divine things of 
the sea that life, not death, casts up round us, and 
nourishes by the spent water of its waves ! How 
utterly idiotic it would be not to collect them 
eagerly, these little bits, for when we go back into 
life we shall see the forests from which they come, 
the sapphire caves in which they really dwell. A 
little bit of life, that grouse that the eagles ate, was 
cast up close to you to-day. I shall particularly 
ask, when the wave takes me off again, where it 
came from. And I shall go and see the place. And 
certainly I shall see Mistress Eagle come back/ 

Courage, huge, natural courage like this, abso- 
lutely unassumed, absolutely instinctive, may have 
60 


AUGUST 


one of two effects on the beholder of it. It may 
make him weep for the admiration of it, or it may 
make him laugh out of joyousness of heart for the 
same admiration. At least I laughed. 

‘ Oh, be sure to show me the place when I come/ 
I said. ‘ I am certain that Mistress Eagle will have 
a nice house/ 

‘ They all have/ she said. ‘ There are many 
mansions/ 

She looked at me in silence a moment. 

‘ But I was not so certain of all these things when 
first I knew that I was so soon to see them all/ she 
said. f At first, though I was never exactly fright- 
ened, I was dazed and stunned. I saw nothing 
clearly. I must use another image for that, and 
say that days passed as one sees the landscape pass 
through a railway-carriage window which is blurred 
by rain. I could see nothing clearly ; it was all dim 
and rain-streaked. But then, without any conscious 
effort on my part, except perhaps a little exercise 
of patience, we passed — the train and I — out of the 
scud again, and soon the glass cleared, and I saw 
the green valleys and the sunny hillside just as 
they had always been/ 

Again she paused. 

* I have not told you anything of importance yet/ 
she said ; ‘ all I have said is really quite obvious. 
But this now 

4 You think of Pan as the smiling face that peeps 
from the fern, the presence that assures all suffering 
things that he is kind when he pipes to them, even 
though the sound means death. But surely that is 
61 


A REAPING 


no more than a sort of pagan mythical aspect of 
him. I always think that he suffers too, that every 
pain which he seems to inflict is only the reflection 
of the pain in his own universal heart, although he 
still smiles. It is from the cross that He smiles 
at us all/ 


62 


SEPTEMBER 


63 















SEPTEMBER 


The ' Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness * has 
indeed been a close bosom friend of the maturing 
sun, and for the last three days before Legs went back 
to his crammer in town, he, Helen, and I spent a 
prostrated existence. Heat that in July invigor- 
ates, is utterly intolerable if it occurs at the end of 
September, just as the crisp winter day, which would 
be so welcome in January, descending to the earth 
as it usually does in June, produces merely amazed 
horror at the weather, and probably a cold. The 
superficial view that we suffer because we are 
improperly clad for these climatic surprises (a view 
that Helen put forward the other night) is beside 
the point. During these days, if I was improperly 
clad, it was only because I had so little on. In fact, 
only ten minutes before she had said as much. 

The state of Legs' affections, I am bound to add, 
aggravated the sultriness of the weather, and made 
me feel exactly 350 (three hundred and fifty) years 
old. To take it at its best, he was embarked on a 
violent flirtation with a dreadful girl ; to take it at its 
worst, he was falling in love with her. She is the 
daughter of a neighbouring minute squire, who owns 
three turnip-fields, and calls it shooting. Legs shot 

65 E 


A REAPING 


over it the other day, and after walking over the 
whole estate twice, got back to The Grange in time 
for lunch. This was before I returned from Scot- 
land, or I should have tried to prevent it. Probably 
I should not have succeeded. 

The neighbouring squire’s name is Ampthump. 
I know quite well that it is not his fault, but that, 
wedded to what he is and a German wife, makes me 
unable to like him. His wife makes incredible quan- 
tities of jam, which, again, is an innocent pursuit; 
and Charlotte, the daughter, talks German to Legs, 
who I wish was more like Goethe. The whole 
family, in fact, as may have been already perceived, 
appear to me to be simply intolerable. 

The attachment also has already led to equivo- 
cation on the part of Legs. He pretends that he 
talks to Charlotte because it is so good for his 
German. He knows that it is not so, and I know 
it is not so, and I think he knows that I know it is 
not so. But it really looks at the moment that 
unless they marry each other there will be a broken 
or, at any rate, a cracked heart. I only hope it 
will not be Legs’. I don’t care the least what 
happens to Charlotte’s heart. It may, however, be 
only a flirtation, in which case there probably will 
not even be a crack. Legs will wake up one 
morning, and after handling some precious withered 
flowers will wonder what on earth they ever meant to 
him, and throw them in the fire. Or Charlotte will 
do something equally desperate. That is my hope ; 
my fear is that they are falling in love with each 
other. 


66 


SEPTEMBER 


This narrative, it should be understood, is the 
gist of what I have been saying fragmentarily to 
Helen. She considers it a cynical view, which alarms 
me, since I hold the creed that all cynics are properly 
and irretrievably damned. To-night Legs went to 
bed early, with dishevelled hair, a wakeful eye, and 
a gale of sighs, and I came upstairs to talk to Helen 
about it all while she brushed her hair. 

* You are quite ridiculous about it,’ she said. 
* Because you happen not to like the Ampses (we 
have agreed on that abbreviation), you think that 
they are unlovable. Legs has proved the contrary. 
Besides, what on earth does her name matter, if she 
is going to change it V 

I groaned intentionally, and in a graveyard 
manner. 

* Do you mean that you think Legs is in love with 
her ?’ I asked. 

* Yes ; at least, I hope so. He had a long talk with 
me to-day. He said he felt it was time he settled 
down. What a darling ! Just twenty ! I wish I 
was/ 

Most of this was irrelevant. I tried ta pick out 
pieces that were not. 

' Of course, her name doesn’t matter/ I said. 

' Her name might be Well, you can’t do worse 

than Ampthump, and it does happen to be exactly 
that. But her face is like a ham ’ 

' That is superficial/ said Helen. ‘ Beside, it 
isn’t. It’s oval.’ 

‘ So is a ham. And she’s a prig. Ampthump ! 
Good Lord !’ 


67 


E 2 


A REAPING 


I am afraid I shouted this, because she said : 

‘ Hush ! Legs will hear/ 

* Not he. Or if he does, he will think it is only 
the wind whispering the beloved name/ 

‘ Yes, but you didn’t whisper it. Oh, do take the 
brush. You made me send my maid away, so you 
must do it yourself. I can’t brush from here, 
because my arms are in front.’ 

Now in my heart I pity everybody who has not 
seen Helen with her hair down. All such folk, 
in all their millions, lead impoverished exist- 
ences. There is a wave in it that is like the big 
unbroken billows which succeed a storm, when the 
clouds have passed and the sun shines. It is lit from 
within, even as they seem to be irradiated from the 
depths. Those billows must go over a sandy fore- 
shore, for they are yellow, and the sun — I know not 
how — must be foggy, for there is a little red light 
in them. And brushing, as I did now, I held my 
hand over them, and the hair rose to it with a tiny 
cracking sound. Her hair came to my hand, lifted 
towards it that unminted gold that framed her face, 
and covered her ears. And for a little while it was 
no wonder that I forgot about Legs and his 
Charlotte. 

I suppose everybody knows the sensation of being 
lost. You can be lost all by yourself, as I was once, 
as I have said, in the western desert of Egypt, on 
which occasion the bray of a donkey was to me the 
trumpet of the Seraphin. That was a dreadful ex- 
perience, since it implied being out of touch with 
68 


SEPTEMBER 


life. But I should be glad to know if there is any- 
thing the world holds which is more enraptured 
than the sense of being lost with one other person., to 
feel the world swim away, and be dissolved, so that 
you and the comrade you are with are quite alone. 
To feel that there is no existence except the existence 
of her who is lost with you. ... It was Helen’s hair. 

‘ That’s the world’s side ; there’s the wonder !’ 
That lover understood. Everyone saw Helen’s hair. 

‘ “ But the best is when I glide from out them, 

Cross a step or two of dubious moonshine, 

Come out on the other side. . . ’ 

I never could quote correctly. The point is that 
the beloved has another face, the face she turns to 
her lover. No one else sees it ; it is ' blind to Keats, 
him even.’ 

A moment ago I thought that no one but me must 
see Helen’s hair. Now let them all see it, the waves 
of the sunlit sea, not breaking, unless the break be 
where I put my hand an inch above them. 

‘ Thanks, dear,’ she said soon. ‘ You brush it 
much better than my maid. Now shall we talk for 
five minutes ? Then I must go to bed.’ 

I had hideous accumulations of various fag-ends 
of work to do, and at the end of the five minutes, or 
it might be ten, I went downstairs again, to begin 
at any rate this dreadful patchwork of odds and 
ends. It was still, I was almost sorry to observe, 
only just eleven, and since I had with both eyes open 
deliberately and firmly wasted all the hours of the 
day, my uneasy Conscience told me that I had 
69 


A REAPING 


better, if it was to have the ease it craved, not think 
of leaving my chair for a couple of hours at least. I 
argued this point with it, and lost some minutes, for 
I told it that it was extremely bad for me to work 
at night, that it took more out of one than work 
in the day, that work done under these circumstances 
was never good work, that doctors recommended 
one never to work at night, but go peacefully to bed 
before the evening fever — whatever that might be — 
set in. Then there ensued a short spirited dialogue. 

* Most sensible/ said Conscience. * Give me your 
word that you will get up at six to-morrow, then, 
and work for two hours before breakfast, and you 
have my leave to go to bed now/ 

‘ But I shan’t wake at six/ said I, * and the 
servants have gone to bed/ 

‘ I will wake you/ said Conscience. (Conscience is 
quite capable of the odious feat.) 

* But I can’t work before breakfast,’ I said. ‘ It 
makes me feel ’ — I could not think of the word for 
the moment — ‘ oh yes, faint.’ 

‘ Well, feel faint, then,’ said Conscience. 

‘ But I would sooner not ; it implies weakness of 
the heart.’ 

* Not to do your work implies weakness of 
character.’ 

' Shut up,’ said I, * and let me begin, then.’ 

And I could swear that my Conscience gave a self- 
satisfied chuckle. 

For an hour I waded wearily, knee-deep only, so 
to speak, in work, like a man who wants to swim, 
but has to trudge out over level sands. Most 
70 


SEPTEMBER 


people, I fancy, even the laziest of us, like working, 
when we get up to our necks, or, better even, out of 
our depths, in it, but the wading is weary work. 
The worst of it was that the fact that I had to wade 
so far was entirely my own fault, for the whole of 
the last week I had never taken the trouble to finish 
up any one job, and now there waited for me several 
bills to pay, since a few mornings ago I had sat down 
to pay bills, and had paid them all except two or 
three ; several letters to write, all of which had to 
begin either falsely (i.e., ‘ I have just found your 
letter of the 17th ’), or apologetically (i.e., ‘ I 

haven’t answered your letter before because ’). 

Then there was a half-corrected proof of an unfinished 
article, badly written originally, and, what is more, 
written without conviction. It was on a subject 
that did not particularly interest me, and I had only 
written it because the misguided editor of a magazine 
had offered me £25 for it, and I very much wished 
to buy a seal-top spoon which cost exactly that 
sum, and which I knew perfectly well I had no 
right to buy. So, saying to myself that I would 
write this article (which I should not otherwise have 
done), I had bought it, and here was the dismal 
price that I had to pay for it — namely, that this 
wretched article was a piece of literary dishonesty. 
I had to fudge and vamp over it, trying to conceal 
the nakedness of the land by ornamental expres- 
sions. That was brought home to me now. It was 
all bad cheap stuff, and though most of us are con- 
tinually turning out bad cheap stuff, not knowing 
it is bad and cheap, such manufactures become 

71 


A REAPING 


criminal when we do know it. As long as work is 
honest from the workman’s point of view, it is only 
his misfortune when he does not know its valueless- 
ness ; but when he does know its valuelessness, he 
sins by intention, and is a forger. I was one, and by 
my forgery I had bought a seal-top that was not. 
I thought that when I tacitly agreed to work for 
two hours to-night, my tiresome Conscience would 
put its head under its wing, and leave me alone, but 
I found now that it was broad awake again, and 
chirping like a canary. 

‘ What are you going to do ?’ it chirped. ‘ Are you 
going to send out a rotten forgery which everybody 
who knows anything will detect ? or are you going to 
tear it up, and be left with a purchase that you know 
you can’t really afford ? Remember that you must 
get a new dining-room carpet too ; you promised 
Helen you would. Chirp, chirp, chirp !’ 

I am bound to say that this enraged me. 

‘ What’s the use of making that row ?’ I said. 

‘ It’s you, Conscience, who has to settle.’ 

‘ I haven’t the slightest idea,’ said Conscience. 
‘ It’s your fault ; you wouldn’t listen to me when I 
told you that you had no right to accept £25 for 
your dreadful article.’ 

‘ You didn’t say it so loud, then,’ said I. 

‘ No, but you heard all right,’ said Conscience. 

* I hardly heard,’ said I. * You spoke so 
indistinctly.’ 

* Yes, but you did hear,’ it chirped, with a sort of 
devilish cheerfulness. ‘ You knew quite well what 
I meant. Now you suffer for it. Hurrah !’ 

72 


SEPTEMBER 


I wonder if I am cursed in this matter of 
Conscience beyond the majority of mankind. Often 
and often (I will swear to this in the House of Lords 
if necessary) my Conscience is hardly audible at all 
at the time when I do anything which I ought not 
to do, or omit to do anything which I ought. To 
continue the simile of the canary, which really fits 
the case, when the actual choice comes, it is as if the 
canary had a thick green-baize cover round its cage, 
and only hoarse and muffled notes reach me. Very 
often, indeed, I am sorry to say, I don't attend to 
them, or say it is only the cat, and in consequence do 
what I should not. Then the moment it is done the 
baize cover is whisked off, and the infernal and 
cheerful chirping, or so it sounds, succeeds to the 
wrong choice or the weak omission. And the burden 
of the chirping is always the same. 

* I told you so ; I told you so. Now you are in a 
mess ! What are you going to do now ? Chirp, 
chirp, chirp !' 

And a hurricane of dry and deafening notes follows. 

I sat there with this column of stupid twaddle in 
my hands, and Conscience watched me with its 
bright bird-like eye. Much as I like birds, I hate 
their eyes, because they remind me of Conscience. 
They are beady and absolutely unsympathetic, 
frightfully quick to see, and without a particle of 
pity in them. Conscience never pities one at all ; 
it is the foe that is of a man's household. It always 
gloats over one's mistakes, and things that are more 
than mistakes, and only says : 

73 


A REAPING 


‘ Here comes the master with the whip. A new 
lash, I see, this time. And what a thin shirt you 
have got on !’ 

Nor, when the whipping is over, does Conscience 
sympathize. 

* I told you so ; I told you so/ it says. ‘No, there 
is no soothing ointment of any kind in the house. 
I ate it all up. Wasn’t that a beautiful new lash ?’ 

Well, I tore that dreadful nonsense up, and wrote 
another apologetic letter. I am getting quite good 
at them. But to-morrow — this is what makes 
Conscience mad — I shall tell Helen about it. The 
telling is not pleasant ; it never is. But as soon as 
Helen knows, Conscience has simply to retire. It 
does not understand why it suddenly becomes so 
unimportant, and that gives it a fit of impotent 
rage. Nor do I quite understand, though I am 
nearer to the explanation than Conscience is. But 
she understands. At least, I suppose so, or else 
she would not be able to put the green-baize cover 
on again. 

And then, what with apologetic letters, and the 
drawing of two or three cheques, and the stupid 
attempts, in this matter of the dishonest article, to 
produce something out of nothing, by covering up 
the nothingness by more ornamental expressions, 
and the eventual destruction of it all, I found that 
the two hours were gone, and that I had kept my 
promise to the idiotic canary. It had ceased 
chirping from experience when I told it I was going 
to confess to Helen. 


74 


SEPTEMBER 


The night was intensely hot, and through the long 
open windows of the room in which I had been 
working no breeze entered. Though September had 
but a quarter more of its course to run, it was like 
some sultry July midnight, portending storm, for 
when I went out to take the night-breath the sky 
was thickly overcast, so that no direct ray, either of 
moonlight or of starshine, came earthwards. The 
serrated outline of the elms at the end of the lawn 
was scarce distinguishable against the scape of the 
clouds, and the low land of the water-meadows was 
blanketed in a mist that was only just visible by 
its whiteness against the black blot of the hills 
behind. Fifi, who had very sensibly decided to 
sleep on the veranda, did not stir when I came out, 
though I heard the instinctive thump of her short 
tail on the tiles, the natural politeness of the dear 
dog, though she really could not stand on ceremony 
with me to the length of getting up. So, maliciously, 
I am afraid, since I thought this slightly cavalier 
conduct, I said ‘ Puss/ though there was no Puss of 
any sort, as far as I was aware. But my malice was 
again thwarted, for Fifi just tapped again with her 
tail, in courteous recognition of a stale old joke, 
just to show that she appreciated my intention, but 
she made not the smallest further effort towards 
activity. 

So she was half asleep, and all the world, this 
dear, blessed world, which is so full of merriness 
and simple, innocent pleasure, despite the fulmina- 
tions of fashionable priests, was quite asleep, not 
stirring, scarcely breathing, just sleeping, sleeping. 

75 


A REAPING 


It was not yet the hour when, just before the hold 
of the night begins to tremble and be weakened in 
the sky, all living things wake for a moment — that 
mysterious moment, when sheep take a bite of grass, 
and cows twitch their grave ears, and horses stand 
up for a minute before they settle down to the light 
morning sleep which dissolves with day, and when 
even indoors, if you sleep with a dog in your room, 
and happen yourself to be awake, you will hear a 
stretching of limbs on your bed or on the carpet, 
and a long sigh breathed into the blankets. Plants 
and flowers, so I truly believe, feel the same thing ; 
and though there may be no wind perceptible to you 
if you are abroad, as sometimes I am, at that hour, 
you will hear, just at the moment when cattle move 
and sheep take their bite of grass, a stir go through 
the trees, and a hushed whisper lisp in the flower- 
beds. At that moment, too (you need not credit 
this, though it is absolutely true) , though it has rained 
all night till then, and will rain thereafter, steadily, 
soakingly till morning, the rain ceases, as suddenly 
as if a tap was turned off. Time and again I have 
tested that. 

But, as I have said, that mysterious moment 
was not due yet. It was still two hours short of it, 
and everything was still asleep. Even in the last 
minute or two Fifi had fallen fast asleep, too, after 
I had sat down in a wicker chair on the veranda, 
for when I called her, there was no tap of response. 
To-night, too, the sleep of the world seemed to me 
(feeling it as one does by that sixth sense, which 
still exists dormant in us, and is most awake at night) 
76 


SEPTEMBER 


to be extraordinarily deep. It was the sleep of a 
world that was very tired with this long hot summer. 
There seemed no pulse stirring in it at all, as you 
may find it stir in the light sleep in which Nature 
indulges in June, or still more in the dark, wet nights 
of spring, when the secret boiling up of life begins 
again from hidden root to budding tendril, so that 
if you lay your ear to the trunk of a tree it seems 
that the effervescence of the young year is audible, 
and sings within it, even as the telegraph poles 
are resonant with the wind that hums in the wires. 
Nor could I hear, when I rose and walked across 
the lawn, even though the dew was heavy on the 
grass, the hiss of startled worms, withdrawing from 
the approaching footfall. Black, too, and lifeless, 
was the oblong of the house except where the 
lights burned in the room in which I had been trying 
to be honest. The long herbaceous hedge was black, 
the lawn was black, Helen’s windows and Legs’ 
were black. 

I went back to the seat I had just left, and lit 
a cigarette, meaning to go upstairs to bed when 
I had smoked it. Fifi still lay motionless, though 
generally any excursion into the garden at any time 
of day or night sets her scampering. And then, 
quite suddenly, quite unexpectedly, for nothing 
was farther from my thoughts, I became aware that, 
though the physical world was asleep, there was 
some enormous stir and activity going on in the 
occult world which surrounds and permeates us. 
Yet that is perhaps a wrong expression, for the same 
activity and stir always goes on in that unsleeping 
77 


A REAPING 


realm ; and I must express it more accurately by 
saying that the part of me which was able to per- 
ceive it was suddenly quickened. It is quite possible, 
of course, since I confess to being able to go to sleep 
whenever I choose, and often, without delay, when 
I do not, that at that moment I fell asleep. But 
whether I fell asleep or not, does not make the 
slightest difference, for there was clearly some part 
of my brain awake, and it made my eyes think that 
they saw, and my ears think that they heard that 
which immediately followed. 

As far as I am aware, in any case, I sat down 
again in a rather creaky basket-chair and lit*^. 
cigarette. The match with which I lit it, I threw 
on to the gravel path in front of me, and, since I 
required it no further, it proceeded to burn pros- 
perously. By its light I could see Fifi with her nose 
between her paws. I saw, also, that my shoe- 
lace was untied. 

And then I heard my name called from the garden, 
in a voice that was perfectly familiar to me, though 
for the moment I could not say, so elusive is the 
ear, whose voice it was that called. It was not 
Helen’s, it was not Legs’, it was not . . . and then 
I remembered whose voice it was. It called me 
by name, once only, in the voice that had said, 

* It is from the cross that He smiles at us all.’ 

I do not think I was frightened, but simply for the 
purely personal reason that to me there was nothing 
to be frightened at. The match still burned on 
the gravel path, so short had been the measurement 
of this in the world of time, and I could still see 
78 


SEPTEMBER 


Fifi's nose buried between her paws. Then she 
raised it, looked out into the garden with terrified 
scrutinizing eyes, focussing them on something 
invisible to me, and gave one long howl. But there 
was no moon. It was at something else she howled. 

Then, I confess, as if some bomb had burst within 
me, terror flooded my whole mind, submerging it, 
and I sprang up. Simultaneously I heard a sort 
of strangled scream from the room above, and the 
scurry of unshod feet overhead. Next moment 
the sound of an opening door came to my ears, and 
a quick stumbling tread on the stairs. I ran 
indoors, and reached the door leading from my 
room into the hall, just as the handle of it was 
seized and shaken by someone on the other side of 
it, and Legs burst into the room, his hair all tumbled 
and erect, and his face wearing such a mask of terror 
that for the moment I recognized him only because 
it must be he. 

‘ Who is that in the garden V he said. * Some- 
one in white, who looked up at my window ? And 
Fifi howled at her.’ 

This would never do. Nerves, terror are the 
most infectious things in the world, and unless I 
took steps, there would, I knew, be standing here 
two babbling lunatics. 

‘ I was dozing in the veranda/ I said, ‘ and Fifi 
woke me by howling. She woke you, too ! Legs, 
don’t be an ass ! Pull yourself together. If there 
had been anything, I should have seen it/ 

Legs was as white as a sheet. The whiteness 
somehow showed through his freckled sun-tanned 
79 


A REAPING 


-akin. He was swaying to and fro on his feet, as if 
he would fall, and I put my arm round him, and 
deposited him in a chair. Then I poured out 
a wineglassful of neat whisky. 

'Don’t speak another word till you have drunk 
that/ I said. ‘ Then I shall count ten slowly, 
and then you may speak/ 

Fifi had followed me in, and sat close to the door 
whimpering. With my heart in my mouth and a 
perspiring forehead, I went across to the window 
as I counted, shut and locked it, and pulled down 
the blind. 

* Nine, ten/ I said. 

A little colour had begun to come back to Legs’ 
face. He had drunk the whisky, a beverage which 
he detested, like water, and the frozen fear of his 
eyes was less biting. And then, as suddenly as it 
had come on, my terror left me. Whatever it was 
that I had heard, whatever it was that Legs had seen 
and Fifi perceived, there was nothing to terrify. 
Besides, within myself, now that the cowardly 
disorder of my nerves had passed, I believed I 
knew what it was that had made its presence so 
strangely perceived by us all. The mortal suffer- 
ing of a dear friend was over. Already I was 
ashamed of having told Legs that I had been asleep 
and had neither seen nor heard anything. 

‘ Legs, I lied just now/ I said. ' I heard 
my name called from the garden in Margaret’s 
voice/ 

‘ You mean she is dead ?’ asked he gently. ‘ The 
last accounts had been better, I thought.’ 

80 


SEPTEMBER 


4 I am sure she is.' 

Then for a moment, like a sudden squall, the white 
terror passed over Legs' face again. 

4 It was not her I saw,' he said hoarsely ; ‘ it 
was Death. I thought she had come for me. Fifi 
saw her too.' 

I sat down on the arm of his chair. 

4 Yes, old boy,' I said, I * * 4 I think that you and Fifi 
both saw some manifestation of what I heard. 
But there is nothing to be frightened at. But how 
was it you were at your window? You had gone 
to bed hours ago.’ 

4 I know, but I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and sat 
by the window.’ 

We sat there for some time after that, and by 
degrees Legs recovered from his collapse, and soon, 
instead of terror, mere sleepiness invaded his face. 
Once or twice he stifled a yawn, and at length he 
got up. 

4 I am dead sleepy,’ he said. 4 I think I shall go 
to bed.’ 

4 You are not frightened any longer, are you ?’ 

I asked. 

Legs looked at me out of drooping eyelids, and 
he seemed puzzled. 

4 Frightened ? What about ?’ he said. 4 Good- 
night.’ 

I was very late down next morning, and found 

that Helen and Legs had nearly finished breakfast. 

As I came in, he jumped up. 

8i 


F 


A REAPING 


* Ah, here he is !' he cried. ' Now, did you sit 
up very late last night ?’ 

When he asked that I began to have some sus- 
picion of what was coming next. 

‘ Yes, very. Why V 

* Well, were you talking to yourself ? Helen and 
I both woke in the night, and heard talking in your 
room. I had had some dream that frightened me, and 
I nearly came downstairs for human companionship/ 

‘ Why didn’t you ?’ 

* I was too sleepy. But — where you talking V 

‘ No. You were dreaming. So was Helen. I 
may have groaned now and then over proofs, but 
not more than that/ 

Legs nodded at Helen. 

* I told you it was ghosts/ he said. 

‘ And you heard voices too ?' I asked Helen. 

‘ Yes ; at least, I thought so. But I was very 
sleepy. I thought also I heard Fifi howl/ 

So, you see, there is no corroboration of my story, 
and if I dreamed it all, or made it up, there is no 
one to whom I can appeal for confirmation of its 
verity. But there is just this little bit of evidence — 
namely, that though Legs had finished breakfast, 
he went on drinking cup after cup of tea. When 
Helen left us he explained this to me. 

‘ I woke with a mouth like a lime-kiln/ he said — 
' just as if I had been drinking that dreadful whisky 
of yours. I drank most of my jug, too, and they 
had to bring me more water to wash in/ 

82 


SEPTEMBER 


What happened last night, then, had been wiped 
clean off Legs’ brain again. Whatever it was that 
he had seen, that which made him stumble white- 
faced downstairs, had gone. But an hour or two later, 
while we were out playing croquet in the garden, 
some faint echo of it, I think, crossed him again. 
A telegram was brought out for me, which contained 
what I knew it would contain, and I handed it to 
him when I had read it. Then we went quietly 
ind ^ors. 

Just as we got into my room again, he said : 

‘ How odd that sensation is of feeling that some- 
thing has happened before. When you handed me 
the telegram, I felt I knew what was in it. And 
during the last week she had been rather better, 
had she not V 


83 


F 2 














/ 


✓ 



OCTOBER 














OCTOBER 


The business of the dining-room carpet (a case of 
conscience makes the whole world kin, so I con- 
fidently return to this matter) was settled more 
beautifully than I had thought possible. I told 
Helen all about it, and she said : 

‘ Thank goodness you tore the thing up ! Dear, 
you are such a silly ass ! There’s nothing whatever 
more to be said. You are, aren’t you ?’ 

‘ There’s nothing more to be said, I believe you 
remarked.’ 

‘ Well, you may just say “ Yes,” * said she. 

So I said ‘ Yes.’ It was a variant of the woman’s 
last word, spoken by a man instead. 

* There, now we’ll go and quarrel about the rose- 
garden,’ said she. 

We went and quarrelled. She was flushed with 
triumph over making me say ‘ Yes,’ and in conse- 
quence I got my way about several disputed points, 
which to-day the darling thinks she chose herself. 

The rose-garden is a design of unparalleled 
audacity, and when it grows up, it will be nothing 
short of stupendous. For between us Helen and 
I are territorial magnates, and beyond this house and 
garden, which are hers, I am owner of two fields, and 
limitless possibilities. I bought them a year ago, 
87 


A REAPING 


in] a sudden flush ^ of extravagance, and for six 
months we maintained there (at staggering loss) 
a poultry-yard in one corner and a cow over the 
rest. The original design, of course, was to make 
a sound investment in land, which, in addition to 
the fathomless pleasure of owning it, would keep us 
in butter, eggs, chickens to eat (not to mention, 
as I hasten to do, savouries of chicken liver on 
toast), and possibly beef. If one considers the 
question closely, it is difficult to see how a cow 
can (i) give milk, and (2) give beef ; but Helen, 
in visionary enthusiasm, said we should have oxen 
as well, and why not pigs in the farther corner ? 
I did not at once see why not, and I bought the two 
fields with the same unconcern as I should have 
bought a box of matches, which yield so sure an 
enjoyment in the matter of lighting cigarettes. 

Then we both began to learn that, though we 
might be gardeners, we were not farmers. The 
poultry -yard was (mistakenly, no doubt) erected 
at the corner of the field nearest the house, and 
morning after morning we were awakened at dead 
and timeless hours. Helen said that when a hen 
made a long clucking noise, it meant she had laid 
an egg, and that, till the thing became incredible, 
consoled me. For if she was right, it was clear 
that hens laid invisible eggs, or that they were doing 
tiresome conjuring tricks, and that the long-drawn 
crow meant, ‘ I have laid an egg, but see if you can 
find it. I am the mother of this disappearing egg/ 
We usually were not able to do so, but sometimes 
an egg was found in a hedge, or in a ditch, which 
88 


OCTOBER 


when found was totally uneatable, except by the 
Chinese. Personally, I believe that by some un- 
happy mischance we had bought celibate and barren 
poultry , whose customs drove us daily nearer Bedlam; 
in fact, it was the pig that was our hellebore. 

The pig was not a pig, but a sow. She went mad, 
too — or so I must believe — jumped the pigsty in the 
opposite corner, made a bee-line for the poultry- 
yard, went through our beautiful wire-fencing 
as if it had been a paper hoop in a circus, and ate 
two hens. The cock beat a masterly retreat, and 
was never heard of again. The other four hens 
followed him. And the sow, dripping with gore, 
lay down in the hen-house and slept. Almost before 
she woke, she was sold for a song. 

Then the cow came. I do not wish to libel her, 
but I think I may safely say that she was milkless 
and excitable, and had a wild eye. She roamed 
over my fields (mine, I had bought them) as if they 
were her own. Had not Legs been so agile and 
swift, she might have tossed him. As it was, she 
ran into the brick wall at the lower end of the garden, 
and made her nose bleed. As far as I know, that 
was the only liquor that she parted with. She was 
probably mad also, for she used to low in the 
middle of the night, when all proper cows are fast 
asleep. Asleep or awake, however, now she makes 
her fantasias elsewhere. I almost hope she is dead, 
for it requires a larger optimism than I possess to 
believe that she will ever become a proper cow, 
for she was more of a steed for Mazeppa. Perhaps 
she was a horse after all, a horned horse. I wish 
89 


A REAPING 


we had thought of that at the time. As it was, 
we sold her at outrageous loss, as a cow. And with 
her we parted with any idea of keeping farmyard 
animals for purposes of gain. Perhaps we were not 
serious enough about it, and the animals saw that. 

Through last spring and summer the fields rested 
after this invasion of outrageous animals, and about 
the middle of May it struck Helen and me simul- 
taneously that we were going to have a crop of hay. 
That was delightful, and much less harassing than 
hens. Hay would not wake one at timeless hours, 
nor would it go mad, and have to be sold at a quarter 
of the price we gave for it, since we gave nothing 
for it at all. It was the pound of tea thrown in 
with the fields we had bought, or the Times news- 
paper thrown in with your subscription to that 
extraordinary library. 

From this there was born the scheme of giving 
a haymaking party, to which we originally planned 
to ask everybody we knew, amended that to asking 
all the children we knew, and afterwards (this 
was Helen’s amendment) decided not to ask anybody 
at all, partly because children were so serious, but 
chiefly because there might not be enough hay to 
go round. We neither of us knew how many square 
yards of hay it was reasonable to supply to each 
person, and it would be dreadful if there was not 
enough. Either Helen or I, or both of us, would 
have to go without, and it was safer to give the hay- 
making party to each other. We were in town all 
May, and the first half of June, but had left word 
90 


OCTOBER 


with the gardener to send us a postcard when the 
hay was ready. The weather throughout these 
weeks was gloriously sunny, and in our mind’s eye 
we saw the crop growing taller and thicker with 
each blazing day. 

Then one evening came the memorable postcard : 

* A reddy.’ 

We flew to the * A.’ In the middle of the largest 
field was a small haycock like a penwiper. One 
not quite so large and round at the top, more like 
a pincushion, was visible in the next field. 

It was clear after this that the Powers that Are 
willed that our fields should not be used for utilitarian 
purposes. Hence the inception of the rose-garden. 

A brick wall (the one against which the insane 
cow had blooded her nose) bounded the garden. 
From there the ground declined steeply away into 
the middle of the larger field, which was cup-shaped, 
the ground rising on all sides of it. (It was at the 
centre of the cup, where the sugar is, that the pen- 
wiper had been raked together.) To-day a flight of 
steps made of broken paving-stones — an entrancing 
material — led down the side of the cup from the 
garden-gate, and up the opposite slope. Standing 
where the sugar is, therefore, you saw on every side 
of you rising ground, which had been terraced, 
and walks of broken paving-stone, communicating 
with the two staircases, lay concentrically round. 
And the Herculean labour which had already occu- 
pied us so many rapturous afternoons was to plant 
the whole cup with rose-trees, so that, standing in 
91 


A REAPING 


the centre, there was nothing visible except sky and 
roses. That was practically done ; and to-day what 
occupied us was the consideration of the level re- 
mainder of the field, of which there was some half- 
acre. It was rough, coarse grass, starred with 
dandelion, which gave the first hint. We wanted 
to get rid of the dandelion, and 

At last I got Helen to agree, and I mixed together 
in a wheelbarrow an infinity of bulbs, and other 
delectable roots. There were big onion-like daffo- 
dils, neat crocuses with an impatient little yellow 
horn sticking up, fritillary roots, bottle-shaped 
tulips, the corms of anemones, and the orris of the 
iris. Then, trowel in hand, each with a bag of bulbs 
taken haphazard out "of the wheelbarrow and with a 
bag of sand to make a delectable sprouting-place 
for the roots, we started. Every dandelion encoun- 
tered was to be dug up with honesty and thorough- 
ness, and where the dandelion had been there was 
to be planted a bulb taken at random out of the bag. 
Helen said it would take ten years. Personally, 
when I looked, I thought longer, but I did not say so, 
for I practise reticence on discouraging occasions. 

I wonder how many people know the extraordinary 
delight of doing a thing for oneself, starting from the 
beginning. I do not say that it gives me the smallest 
pleasure to black my boots or brush my clothes, 
since somebody has already made those boots and 
woven the cloth. But there is nothing more en- 
trancing than to deal first-hand with Nature, to 
make holes in the earth, and put in them roots, the 
farthest back that we can go with regard to vege- 
92 


OCTOBER 


table life. Rightly or wrongly, it seems to me a 
pleasure as clean and as elemental as the joy of 
creation itself. Whether we write a book, or paint 
a picture, or carve a statue, we, though we do not 
really create, but only arrange what is in existence 
already, are going back as far as we can, taking just 
the root-thoughts and translating them to song or 
shape. And though we do not really create at 
all, but only use and arrange, as I have said, the 
already existing facts of the world, passing them, 
it may be, through the crucible of the mind, we get 
quite as near to Nature, if not nearer, when we go 
a-bulb-planting. The bulbs are our thoughts, our 
pigments, what you will, and when in spring-time we 
shall see them making a meadow of Fra Angelico, it 
will be because we have actually planted these things 
ourselves that the joy of creation will be ours. Not to 
do that would be as if an artist laid no brush on the 
canvas himself, but merely dictated to a dependent 
where such a colour should be spread. But given 
that he had a slave so intelligent and so obedient 
that he could follow to a hair’s-breadth the direc- 
tions given him, can you imagine the artist feeling 
the possessive joy of creation in the result, even 
though it realized the conception to the uttermost ? 
Not I ; nor, in the garden, do I care, like that, to 
see what others have done. It is not sufficient to 
direct ; one has to do it oneself. 

I love, too, and cannot conceive not loving, 
getting hot and dirty over the wrestling with the 
clean, black earth. A great deal of nonsense is 
talked about the dignity of labour, but it is chiefly 
93 


A REAPING 


talked by those whose labour lies indoors, who, 
excellent craftsmen as they may be, go spudding 
about in the intangible realms of the mind. I 
doubt, indeed, whether any market-gardener has 
ever spoken of the dignity of labour. We leave that 
to those who only know it by repute. But I long 
to put down the manner of the transaction. I do 
not in the least think it dignified, but it is such fun. 

The green had mostly faded from the grass, 
leaving the meadow, as is always the case in October, 
far more grey than green. Certain plants, how- 
ever, were still of varnished brightness, and the 
dandelion leaf was one. There was no need to pick 
and choose, and without moving a step, I dug the 
trowel down into the earth, loosened it all round 
the vegetable enemy, and lifted it. An ominous 
muffled snap came from inches down in the earth, 
which I tried to pretend I had not heard. But 
one could not cheat the eye also. There, at the 
bottom of my excavation, was a milky root, showing 
a danger-signal of white against the brown loam. 
I had to go deeper yet : the whole of the tap-root 
must be exhumed. Another dig, another snap, 
a raw-looking worm recoiled from the trowel, only 
just in time, and eventually up came the remotest 
fibre. How good the earth smelt ! How reeking 
with the life of the world ! Cold, clammy, rich earth, 
ever drawn upon by the needs of the Bank of Life, 
ever renewed by that which life paid back to it. 
A thousand years had gone to the formation of my 
trowelful, and a few inches below was the chalk, 
94 


OCTOBER 


where a million lives a million years ago had spent 
themselves on the square inch of it. Slowly, by 
work of the myriad sea-beasts, this shoulder of chalk 
was heaved from the sea, the myriad lives became 
a myriad myriad, and here I had the little lump of 
chalk borne up on the end of the trowel which told 
of the labourers of the unnumbered years. Then, 
in a spoonful of sand, I put the sign, the evidence 
of another decade of millions on the top of them, 
and stuck thereon an onion-like daffodil root that 
was born last year. In a fortnight’s time that 
child of to-day will have reached downwards, feeling 
with delicate, pleased touch the sand of a thousand 
years ago, will delve through the time of the pyra- 
mids of Egypt, will draw moisture from the chalk 
that was old when our computation of time was not 
yet born, and will blossom next April, feeding its 
sap on the primeval years. And for what ? To 
make Helen and Legs and me say, * Oh, what a 
beautiful Horsfeldii !’ Then we shall look at the 
fritillary that prospers a yard away. 

The eternal romance of it all ! To the right- 
minded there is nothing that is not a fairy-story. 
Like children, we crowd round the knees of the 
wonderful teller of it, and say, ' Is it true ? Is it 
all true ?’ And He can’t tell lies. Sometimes, when 
we have a sort of moral toothache, we sit apart, and 
sniff. We say that scientifically we have proved there 
is no God. So said the fool in his heart. But now- 
adays' the fools write it down in their damned books, 
and correct the proofs of it, and choose the bindings 
of it, and read, with gusto, the thoughtful reviews of 
95 


A REAPING 


it. And, God forgive them, they think they are 
very clever people, if I may be excused for mention- 
ing them at all. 

But fairy-stories ! How surprising and entrancing 
are even those which people make up and put in 
books, while round us every day a fairy-story far 
more wonderful is being told not only for us to read, 
but enacted for us to see. It is only familiarity 
with it which robs us of the sense of its wonder, for 
imagine, if we could make ourselves ignorant again 
of what happens to bulbs when we put them in the 
earth, how the possibilities of flying-machines would 
grow flat and stale before the opening of the daffodil. 
For a man’s capacity for happiness is in great measure 
the same as his capacity for wonder and interest, 
and considering that there is absolutely nothing 
round us which does not teem with wonder if only we 
had the sense to see it, it argues very ill for our 

A wild shriek from the hillside opposite (distance 
forty yards) interrupted me. 

* I didn’t mean to,’ cried Helen ; ‘ but I cut a centi- 
pede in half. They are going in opposite directions.’ 

‘ Dig another hole !’ I shouted. * Then go back 
when the halves have gone away. Yes, very dis- 
tressing, but you can’t avoid everything.’ 

* Murderer !’ said Helen. 

This was feminine logic. I had not cut the 
centipede in half ! 

It was one of those golden October days of which 
we have now had some half-dozen. Every night 
there is a little frost, so that morning both looks 
96 


OCTOBER 


and smells exquisitely clean, and it is hardly possible 
to regret the turn of the year ; though dahlias are 
blackened, the trees blaze with copper and gold, 
for in this week of windless days scarce a leaf has 
fallen, and the stems are as thick with foliage as 
they were in the summer, and to my mind doubly 
beautiful. And this work of bulb-planting seems 
to bridge over the winter, for we are already at 
work on spring. But in November. Helen and I 
mean to turn our faces townwards again, for it is 
possible there to be unaware of the transition to 
winter, which is so patently before one’s eyes in 
the country, and which, with the best will in the 
world, it is impossible not to find rather depressing. 
Some people, I know, label the squalls of February 
and March as execrable, and flee the country then. 
But we both love them. These are the last despair- 
ing efforts of winter. His hand is already loosed 
from the earth ; he strikes wildly, knowing that 
there are but few blows left in him. But in the 
autumn he is gaining strength every day : it is life 
whose hold is being loosed. And that is not ex- 
hilarating to watch. True, it is only a mimic death- 
bed, but personally we don’t want to sit by the bed- 
side. In London there is no bedside. The shorter 
the day, the earlier the lamps are lit. Those 
avenues of shining eyes, which are not shocked 
whatever they see. . . . And the fogs — the mys- 
terious fogs ! I suppose we are Cockneys. 

Helen gave out first in the matter of bulbs, and 
came and sat by me. 

97 g 


A REAPING 


* How very dirty you are !’ she said. ‘ And have 
you been planting bulbs with your nose ?’ 

‘ Not at present. But it tickled, and so I rubbed it.’ 

* Well, let’s stop now. I want to go for a walk. 
My back aches with bending, and though I haven’t 
got toothache, I feel as if I might have, and the 
kitchen-maid has given notice, and I don’t think 
anybody loves me, and if Legs marries that awful 
girl, I will never speak to you again. And they are 
coming to dinner to-night ! I pray Heaven that 
Legs may miss his train, and not get here till late.’ 

* So do I. Yes ; let’s go for a real tramp on the 
downs. Hadn’t I better go and wash my face first ?’ 

* Oh no ; what does it matter ? But are you sure 
you don’t want to go on bulbing ?’ 

‘ Quite sure. I think we won’t go by the road, do 
you know. We can strike across the meadows and 
up the beacon.’ 

Helen gave a little purr — a querulous rumble of 
the throat. 

‘ I have the blues,’ she said, with great distinct- 
ness. ‘ I was as happy as possible till ten minutes 
ago, and then they came on like — like a thunder- 
storm. Everything ached. I groaned aloud : my 
mind hurt me like lumbago. It hurts still. Oh, do 
rub something on it.’ 

That is one of the heavenly things about Helen. 
If she * feels bad,’ she comes and tells me about it 
like a child. She scolds me for all sorts of things of 
which I am perfectly innocent, because she knows 
I don’t mind one scrap (I love it, really, but I don’t 
tell her that), and it makes her feel better. She 
98 


OCTOBER 


scolded now, even when we had passed the water- 
meadow and began a really steep ascent of the 
flanking hills. 

* I knew the kitchen-maid wouldn’t stop/ she 
said, * because those London girls hate the country. 
So do I. And it was all your fault. You engaged 
her ; I had nothing to do with it. And we never 
had such a kitchen-maid. She cooks better than the 
cook, and does everybody else’s work as well. You 
might have known she wouldn’t stand the country.’ 

* Go on,’ said I. * My fault entirely. So is the 
toothache, isn’t it ?’ 

* I haven’t got one, but I might have. And that’s 
your fault, too. I wanted to go to the dentist as 
I passed through London, and you persuaded me to 
come down here without stopping. It did ache 
just then — it did.’ 

The hill got rather steeper. 

' Go on,’ said I. ' How slowly you walk !’ 

* Yes, but I have to do all the talking. You have 
no conversation. Oh dear, what a devil I am ! 
Aren’t I ?’ 

4 Yes.’ 

* There ! I told you nobody loved me. Oh, 
look ! we are going to have a real red sunset. All 
the hills are getting molten, as if they were red-hot 
and glowing.’ 

She was feeling a little better — not much, but a 
little. We had come up the two hundred feet of 
steep down-side as if we had been storming a breach. 
To walk very fast up a hill makes all proper people 
feel better, unless they have heart disease, in which 

99 G 2 


A REAPING 


case they die, and so, we hope, feel better also. But 
for those who have not heart disease, and want to feel 
better, the prescription is confidently recommended. 

‘ And then that awful girl !’ she went on. 'You 
insisted on being neighbourly, as you call it, with 
the Ampses, and this is the result.’ 

‘ There has been none at present.’ 

‘ No ; but you tell me to ask the family to dinner 
on the very day that Legs comes down. Oh dear, 
what a heavenly evening ! I should so enjoy it if 
everything wasn’t wrong. Look at the sky ! Fifty 
thousand little pink, fluffy angels floating about in 
it ! Do you want to go right to the top of the 
hill ?’ 

* Yes, right to the top. Then I shall begin to 
answer you back.’ 

Helen laughed. 

* Oh no, don’t,’ she said. ‘ It is no fun plaguing 
you if you dispute my facts. So tell me quickly : 
isn’t everything your fault, and not mine ? Please 
pull me, if you intend to go that pace.’ 

So I pulled her, she holding the end of my stick, 
and we arrived at the very top of all. Sunset was 
below us, evening stars were above us, and on the 
huge expanse of down there was no one else. It was 
the loneliness I love. 

‘ The devil has gone,’ she said, after a while. ‘ You 
are rather nice to me. And I don’t think I have 
toothache, and — well, you thought that Charlotte 
was a little Ampsy before I did. And even if 
nobody loves me — oh, how dirty your nose is !’ 

That was true, anyhow. 


IOO 


OCTOBER 


An extraordinary phenomenon in country towns 
is that, though nobody has anything to do, everyone 
feels extremely busy, whereas in town, though you 
have got an enormous deal to do, you never feel 
busy at all, and can, without fail, find time for 
anything else. I think there must be some microbe 
which cannot live in London, but thrives elsewhere, 
which produces the illusion of being rushed. Per- 
sonally, I know it well : it is not an old enemy of 
mine, nor is it an old friend, but it is a pleasant old 
humbug, which I am afraid I rather encourage. 
This evening, for instance, when I went to my room 
after tea, I encouraged it, and argued that one 
never had a moment to oneself. I had two hours in 
front of me now, as a matter of fact, in which I 
should be undisturbed ; but the Old Humbug said 
that it was all very well to think about the future. 
All he knew was that he — that is, I — had been 
rushed — yes, rushed — all day and all yesterday, 
and ever since we came down to this dear, sleepy old 
town. To-day was Tuesday, and people were 
coming to dinner. We had gone out to lunch 
yesterday, and had dined out twice last week. Also, 
there was the garden to attend to, and a little 
golf (almost every day, as a matter of fact) was 
necessary for the health, and what with letters to 
write and cigarettes to smoke, and the Meister- 
singer overture to learn, in order to play it 
with Legs, I was a victim of this hurrying, bust- 
ling mode of life, which in a generation or so 
more would assuredly send everybody off their 
heads. 


IOI 


A REAPING 


I made myself quite comfortable in my chair, and 
proceeded to think about it seriously, because I had 
two hours in front of me. It was all quite true (I 
was encouraging the Old Humbug, you will under- 
stand), and the modern mode of life was insane. 
London, anyhow, was insane, and in a little while 
I should probably get to agree with the Old Humbug 
that I was rushed and driven in the country also. 
But, to encourage credulity, I took London first. 
There one certainly was busy — all the hours, that is 
to say, of a day that began quite early and ended 
next morning were full, and I reconstructed one such 
as I often spend, and hope to spend many times 
more. I do not give it, because it seems to me the 
least edifying, and all stern moralists (the Old Hum- 
bug is an awfully stern moralist) would — as, indeed, 
they have done — shake their heads over it, and say, 
‘ To what purpose ?’ I will tell you that afterwards. 

I was called, let me say, at half-past seven, and 
after a few incredulous groans got up. I shaved, 
washed a little — not much, for reasons that will 
appear — drank some tea, and in a quarter of an 
hour was wildly bicycling towards the Park. When 
things flourished very much, and money flowed, 
Helen and I rode champing steeds ; but just now 
things were what is called fluctuating, and I rode a 
bicycle, and she stayed in bed. An hour and a 
half of frantic pedalling on a hot June morning pro- 
duces excellent physical results ; and at half-past 
nine I was in the swimming-bath at the Bath Club, 
where I became cool and clean. I changed into 
another suit of flannels there, rode sedately home, 
102 


OCTOBER 


and had breakfast at precisely a quarter-past ten. 
By eleven I had eaten breakfast, read the Daily Mail , 
and smoked a cigarette, and was about to spend 
a quiet, studious morning until half-past one (for 
we were lunching out at two), when Helen came in. 

' Do come to Lord’s/ she said ; ‘ it’s Gentlemen 
and Players, and we can sit there till lunch. We 
can’t go this afternoon, and you are playing golf at 
Woking to-morrow.’ 

' I can’t. Not time.’ 

‘ Oh, just this once.’ 

Just this once, then, we went. It was too 
heavenly, and we were late for lunch. 

It was one of the rather long lunches, and it was 
nearly four when we left the house. Then, as we 
had neither of us seen the Sargents at the Academy, 
we went there, since the afternoon was already 
gone, and got home about six ; and as we had been 
given a box at the opera for ‘ Tristan,’ which began 
at half-past seven, it was necessary to dine at half-past 
six — a terrible hour, but true. At the opera Legs 
picked Helen up to go to a ball, and I went home to 
answer my morning’s post, which I had not yet read. 

But, it will be objected, Gentlemen and Players, 
and the one necessary visit to the Academy, and 
‘ Tristan ’ does not occur every day. Quite true ; 
but something else always does, and the Old Hum- 
bug, who had got quite large and important during 
this short survey, said in those canting tones which 
I knew so well : ‘You are wasting your life over 
this insensate rush and hurry. And you do no 
better down here. What have you done to-day ? 

103 


A REAPING 


Planted bulbs, and written two or three pages of 
your silly book. What will you do to-morrow ? 
You won’t even write your silly book, because you 
are going to play golf with Legs in the morning, and 
you say you can’t work after lunch. And the days 
will make themselves into months, and the months 
into years ’ (here he dropped into poetry), ‘ and you 
will ever be a name of scorn — at least, you would 
if ten minutes after you were dead anybody re- 
membered what your name was. But you will have 
gone to your account.’ 

Well, I join issue with the Old Humbug over this. 
For my part, I assert that it was perfectly right for 
me to go to the Gentlemen and Players, and to the 
opera, and to plant bulbs, and to play golf with 
Legs to-morrow morning if fine. And as for his 
objection to what he calls * rush,’ why, I fling it in 
his face, since I must rush. If I set apart a certain 
time every day for private meditation, I should be 
simply bored. I should get — I suppose this must 
be the proposed practical effect of the plan — no 
great and ennobling thoughts out of my solitary 
meditations, and instead of feeling that I had spent 
the morning to some serious purpose, I should feel, 
and I think rightly, that I had merely wasted it. 
But if I have planted bulbs all morning, I haven’t 
wasted it. I will assert that on the Day of Judg- 
ment ; for I have been busy walking along the path 
I feel sure I was meant to walk on. There are a 
thousand other paths all leading to the central and 
celestial light, and they are for other people to walk 
on. It would, of course, be a terrible waste of time 

104 


OCTOBER 


for one who by nature was a meditative recluse to 
go to the match between the Gentlemen and Players, 
or for a deaf man to go to 'Tristan/ or for ablind one 
to lie on his back and look at the filtering sunlight 
between the leaves of beech-trees in June. But 
the point for everybody is to get into touch with 
life as continually as he can, and at as many points 
as he can. This is gospel. I would I had the 
palate of a wine-taster to get into touch with life 
there ; the prehensile toe and sense of balance of 
a tight-rope walker to get into touch there, the 
mathematical head of the astronomer to learn the 
orbit of a star that has never been seen, but only 
conjectured ; or I wish very much indeed that I 
had the missionary spirit. Indeed, then I would 
go to the nearest cannibal islands and (probably a 
good thing, too) be cheerfully devoured ; or, 
again, if I had it in a lesser degree, I would go and 
teach in the Sunday-school, and have a class for 
boys in the evening. I did try the Sunday-school 
when first I lived here, and for four unhallowed 
Sundays I passed a feverish hour surrounded by 
mystified infants and intolerable lithographs. You 
never saw such a failure as I was : I dreaded those 
hours so much that I thought my reason would be 
unhinged. And the children used to regard me, I 
am sure, as they would have regarded some queer, 
though harmless, creature of the menagerie. I 
couldn’t do that sort of thing. 

I neither made them happy nor could I teach 
them anything. That latter was quite proved when, 
105 


A REAPING 


on the Sunday succeeding my fourth lesson, an 
Archdeacon came round and examined all the 
classes in turn. I think I shall never get over the 
nightmare horror of that scrutiny when he sat in my 
arm-chair at the desk, and I, the trembling in- 
structor, stood by the side while he asked my idiot 
flock who Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were, 
and other really elementary things. One child said 
that Eve was God’s wife, and I wished the earth 
might open and swallow me up. Then he came to 
the Catechism, and it really seemed as if nobody 
knew his own name. And it was for that nightmare 
that I had spent four feverish Sunday afternoons 
and a parody of days between, for every moment 
Sunday was coming nearer. 

No ; I give more happiness to Legs by being 
soundly beaten by him at golf, or by wasting (so 
says the Old Humbug) a morning in taking Helen up 
to Lord’s to see the Gentlemen and Players. Also — 
I hasten to forestall criticism — I like it much better 
myself; and though you may, if you like, call it 
selfish, I hereby state that to like doing anything is 
a very good and Christian reason for doing it. 
Behold the gauntlet ! 

For we poor folk who really cannot teach in 
Sunday-schools, and are not employed in making 
discoveries which will alleviate painful diseases, and 
do not serve our constituency or our King, and 
sneakingly throw pamphlets about the Education 
Bill into the fire without reading them, because we 
know we don’t actually care one pin what happens, 
and are in every single respect quite unsatisfactory 
106 


OCTOBER 


and useless and unornamental, have yet, somehow 
(there can be no doubt of this), to add if we can to 
the happiness, anyhow, of those dear folk among 
whom our lot has been so graciously cast. We have 
no great gifts of any description ; we are neither wise 
nor witty, and there has been only one talent given 
us, which is the power of enjoyment. Well, that 
is a very little one, you may say, and a very selfish 
one to cultivate, but if we have nothing else at 
all, had we not better try to make some use of 
that ? 

For the fact remains that it can be made some 
use of. Everyone feels better for seeing one of these 
drones, who are neither soldiers, nor sailors, nor 
politicians, nor teachers, enjoy himself. Enjoy- 
ment in the air is like oxygen in the air : it quickens 
everybody, and in its way makes them happier. 
The poor drones can neither teach nor fight, nor 
make anybody good, but they can in their humdrum 
way make people a little more cheerful for a few 
minutes. For they have — this is what I mean by 
drones — a happy temperament, and as they are no 
good at all in any other direction, it is indeed time 
that they should be done to death by the workers 
of the hive if they do not exert themselves in the 
mere exercise of their temperament. And just as 
the drone of the hive lives immersed in the honey of 
his flowers and in the garnered stuff that the workers 
have brought home, so the drone man must continue 
to take active and continual pleasure in all the de- 
lightful things of this world. He must pounce on 
enjoyment with eager zeal, and glut himself on it 
107 


A REAPING 


till he reels with the stupefaction of pleasure ; he 
must keep himself keen and alert for the smallest 
humorous or engrossing detail that is within his 
horizons : it is shameful if he does not go to bed 
every night tired with his own laughter and enjoy- 
ment. And woe to him if he invests his pleasures 
with the serious garb of duty ! The leader of the 
delectable life who says that he plays golf because 
he finds exercise so important for his health, or who 
sits out all afternoon to watch other people playing 
other games, and explains that his doctor (his 
doctor, forsooth !) tells him to have plenty of fresh 
air, or who drinks his delicious wine and says that 
it is good for his digestion, is a mere scampish 
hypocrite. He plays games because they are 
such fun ; he watches other people play because it 
amuses him ; he drinks wine because it tastes so 
nice. 

And he must never falter on his primrose path ; 
the high gods have given him but one little talent, 
and all that is asked of him is that he should enjoy 
life enormously. He has got to do that, then. The 
soldier and sailor may not, perhaps, enjoy life, but 
they are useful in other ways. The drone is only 
useful in this one. He must never remit his efforts, 
and must never want to ; he must ‘ rush/ as the Old 
Humbug said, all the time, for if he ceases to rush 
he ceases to justify his existence at all. And — a 
heavenly destiny, one, too, beyond all desert of 
his — he does, if he is at all a conscientious drone, 
make other people a shade more cheerfully disposed 
than they would otherwise have been. 

108 


OCTOBER 


This breathless dissertation on drones requires 
at this point, as printers say, ‘ paragraphing/ In 
other words, I began to talk about one thing, and 
without pause talked about another. It was really 
the fault of the Old Humbug, who said that I wasted 
those days in which I didn’t do something for some- 
body. I then justified my position on those days 
by pleading the desire to be a drone — a life which, 
as I have sketched it out, seems to me to be wholly 
admirable. I wish to Heaven I could be in the 
least like those adorable people. Misbegotten in- 
dustry stands in my way, and a deep-rooted, but 
equally misbegotten, idea that if I am very in- 
dustrious I shall one day write a good story. Also, 
I have not the drone temperament necessary for 
dronage. I am not, in fact, any longer defending 
myself, but extolling other people. 

Loafers there are in plenty in this world, but 
personally I have no use for them. They lead the 
same external lives as the lover of life leads, but 
how different is the spirit that animates them ! 
The loafer may have been side by side with the life- 
loving drone all day, at the same parties, at the same 
games, at the same music, but the one goes to all 
these things in order to get through the hours with- 
out boredom, while the other wishes the hours in- 
finitely multiplied so that he might go to more. 
The one sucks enjoyment of but a stupefied sort 
from them ; the other catches the iridescent balls 
and bubbles of joy that are cast like sea-spray over 
the tides of time, only to throw out double of what 
109 


A REAPING 


he has received. He is like some joyful juggler : a 
stream of objects pours into the air from his flashing 
hands ; he catches them and hurls them into the 
air again, so that the eye cannot follow the pro- 
cession of flying joys. And at the end, at the close 
of each day, he stands still for a moment, his hands 
full of them, his memory stored with them, eager 
for the next day. 

How different is the loafer ! Have you ever 
seen the chameleon feed on flies ? It is just so 
that the loafer, who wants only to get through the 
hours, feeds on the simple, silly joys of life. In ex- 
pression the chameleon is like a tired old gentle- 
man with the face-ache, though the impression of 
face-ache is chiefly produced by cheeks swollen in 
other ways, for he rolls up his tongue in a ball in 
his mouth when he is going to feed. Then, with an 
expression of bored senility, he moves very cau- 
tiously to where a fly is sitting. When he is within 
range, he shoots out his tongue, and the fly sticks 
to the adhesive tip of it. There is a slight swallowing 
motion, and the chameleon again rolls about his 
greasy eye, looking for the next victim. The loafer, 
in a metaphysical sense, has got just such an ad- 
hesive tongue as the chameleon. He puts it out, 
and pleasures stick to it like postage stamps. Then 
he swallows them. Observe, too, when he has to 
make occupations for himself, how heavily and 
stupidly he passes the hours ! He will read the 
morning paper till midday, then totter out into his 
garden, sadly remove one weed from the path, and 
totter back to the house to throw it in the fire. Then 


IIO 


OCTOBER 


he will re-read a page of his paper, and write an 
unnecessary note with unnecessary care, probably 
wiping his pen afterwards. It will then be lunch- 
time. How different would the drone’s morning 
have been ! Even if he had been compelled to 
spend it on the platform of Clapham Junction, he 
would have constructed some ‘ dome in air ' out of 
that depressing suburb. The flashing trains would 
have allured him (especially the boat-trains), and 
his mind would have gone long journeys to the sunny 
South. He would have built romance round the 
signals, and found a fairy-tale in the advertisements. 

And what is the practical side of all this ? for is 
it not temperament which makes the magic of these 
wonderful persons, and temperament is a thing 
which is supposed to be quite outside the power of 
its possessor to alter or amend ? 

Broadly speaking, I suppose that is true, and we 
who do not possess the magic would bungle terribly 
if we attempted to rival the flashing hands of the 
true conjurer. I do not suppose, at any rate, that 
it is worth while for the meditative recluse to spend 
his days and nights at festive gatherings, since he 
will never enjoy them himself, and, what is more 
important, he will, in his small way, eclipse the 
gaiety of those parties on which he sheds the gloom 
of his depressing countenance. Yet, since I believe 
with my whole heart that joy and simple pleasure, 
so long as they hurt nobody, are things wholly and 
entirely good, it behoves everyone to look sedulously 
in the garden of his mind to see whether he cannot 


A REAPING 


find there a few little seedlings of that species of 
temperament which I have tried to indicate. His 
garden may be the most strenuous and improving 
plot — a regular arboretum of high aspirations and 
earnest endeavours with the most beautiful gravel 
paths of cardinal virtues leading by the thickets and 
shrubberies of spiritual strivings, but, should he 
happen to find a few of these seedlings, and be 
able to raise them, they will not spoil the effect 
of the wholly admirable grove of moral purpose. 
To be quite candid, I think a little colour ' sets off,’ 
as they say, the grandeur of high endeavour. It 
— well, it brightens it up. 


1 12 


NOVEMBER 





NOVEMBER 


‘ 1/ remarked Helen, ‘ am the rose of Sharon, and 
the lily of the valley/ 

She laid great stress on the * and/ which gave a 
perfectly new significance to the verse. 

* The French for lily of the valley is muguet,’ said 
Legs, with an intolerably superior air. 

* Oh, don’t show off !’ said she. 4 The great thing 
in walking along a rail is to keep your balance/ 

* Through the looking-glass/ said I. ‘ Upon which 

the White Knight fell head foremost into a hole * 

And kept on saying “ Plenty of practice/’ ’ said 
Legs. 

‘ It’s easier if you wave your arms/ said she. 

‘ Oh, there’s a train coming. Where’s the gum ?’ 

Legs had the gum — a small penny bottle — and 
Helen hastily gummed a penny to the rail, and we 
all retired to the side of the line. 

If you merely lay a penny on the rail, the chances 
are that the first wheel that goes over it causes it to 
jump, and it falls off, whereas, if you gum it 

There was a wild maniac shriek from the engine, 
suddenly dropping an octave as it passed us, and 
the huge train, towering high above us, thundered 
by with rattle of wheels and the throbbing oscilla- 
115 h 2 


A REAPING 


tion of very high speed. A dozen bits of paper 
came trundling and dancing after it. The rear of 
the van telescoped itself into a tiny square, and the 
signal just above us, which had been down to let 
the train pass, shot up a warning, right-angled arm. 

* Oh, well over sixty/ said Legs, with deep ap- 
preciation, ‘ and there’s the penny sitting as tight 
as, as — I don’t know. Lord, how hot 1’ 

The penny had already been under half the wheels 
of four trains, and was so flattened that it was of 
knife-edge sharpness. 

‘ If you stropped it a little, you could shave with 
it,’ said Helen. ‘ What babies you are !’ 

Legs was already busy on the up-line, arranging 
two pins crossways on the gummed rail, so that they 
should be flattened and welded together, making an 
entrancing object closely resembling a pair of scissors. 

* The up-train will be through in five minutes,’ 
he said. ‘ Chuck me the penny, Helen.’ 

I had another object of interest — namely, a three- 
penny piece with a hole in it. I had tied a long 
string to this, the far end of which I held in my 
hand. The reason for this was that the coin was 
beginning to crack, but it would stand a wheel or 
two more, though it was already bigger than a six- 
pence ; after a wheel or two I could pull it away. 

* Gum !’ said I. 

We moved to the far side of the up-line, and 
waited. Soon from the tunnel a hundred yards 
below came a wreath of smoke, and the black- 
fronted engine raced towards us. Everything went 
right on that divine afternoon, and after four wheels 
116 


NOVEMBER 


had passed I jerked my threepenny piece away. 
The scissors were adorable also, and it would be 
scarcely necessary to strop the penny. Of course, 
we made a cache of these objects, burying them in 
a small tin box with the addition of a piece of paper 
recording our names, weights, and ages. Legs also 
wrote a short confession of how he murdered his 
two infant children, and hid the bodies in a bramble- 
bush ten paces from the cache. There was no such 
bramble-bush really, which would make it more 
puzzling to the inquiring mind. He represented 
himself as being perfectly impenitent, and ready to 
commit similar crimes should opportunity occur. 
He signed it, Benjamin Yates of 21A, Park Lane, W. 
Then we went home to tea. 

Legs had been in for his Foreign Office examina- 
tion, and had come down to spend the next two 
days with us, before we all moved up to town ; also, 
to our deep-felt and secret joy, he had shown no 
desire to visit the Ampses, or talk any more German 
with Charlotte. The process of disillusionment began, 
I think, on the evening in October when he was here 
last, and the Ampses dined with us ; for I saw him 
overhear Mrs. Amps ask Helen who * was the heir 
to all our beautiful property.’ At that moment I 
almost pitied Mrs. Amps. She had begun by making 
jam, but I felt that she had gone on to cook Char- 
lotte’s goose. Legs, anyhow, stopped in the middle 
of a sentence, and took a couple of seconds to recover 
himself. I am sure I don’t wonder. You require 
to recuperate after that sort of remark. I felt that 
117 


A REAPING 


I knew all about Mrs. Amps when she asked that 
simple question. I felt as if I had known her 
parents and grandparents, and could prophesy 
about her children and grandchildren ; and Legs’ 
eyes, which till that moment had been quite shut, 
began to open, just to blink. 

Next day, however, he lunched with them. What 
happened I do not know, since he has not told me ; 
but he was rather silent in the evening, ate little, but 
drank four glasses of port after dinner. I think the 
instinct of the drowning of care was there, and he was 
slightly cynical and Byronic afterwards. I love Legs. 

I hasten to add, lest I may appear unfeeling, that 
Charlotte has for the last week or two been kind and 
encouraging to another young man, who is the heir 
to far more beautiful property. I saw him at the 
golf-links yesterday in a bunker. He was arranging 
her hands so as to grasp her niblick properly. They 
seemed to want a great deal of arranging. By-and- 
by they allowed my opponent and me to pass. 
Charlotte seemed not to recognize me, or else she 
was really so much employed in making her hat 
stay on that she did not see me. I mentioned, how- 
ever, to Legs that I had seen her, but that she had 
not seen me. It seemed to interest him very little. 

But this morning, as Legs and I played golf over 
the grey back of the huge down that rises from our 
happy valley, it seemed a sheer insanity that we 
should all go up to London the next day, so blithe 
was the air, so invigorating to the whole sense. 
The short, springy turf seemed to put its own 
vitality into one’s feet ; they were shot forward 
118 


NOVEMBER 


automatically without conscious effort. And — ah, 
the rapture ! — (it occurred more frequently to Legs 
than to me) of seeing a clean white ball scud for a 
hundred yards or so low over the ground, and then 
rise swallow-like against the ineffable blue ! Golfers, 
I am told, reck nothing of their surroundings, pro- 
vided only they drive far, approach dead, and hole 
their puts ; and so I must conclude — indeed, I con- 
clude it for other reasons — that I am no golfer. But 
I am an epicure in my surroundings when I go a- 
golfing, and though the grey dunes and sandy 
hollows of the seaside course are most to my mind, 
I place very near those perfect joys the hugeness of 
scale which you get only on the uplands. To-day 
no whiff of vapour flecked the whole field of the 
shining heavens, and the country, grey and green, 
with fire of autumn beech- wood here and there, 
stretched map-like round us. But to the west the 
view was even more stirring to that desire of the 
infinite which lies so close to the heart of man. 
There fold after fold of downs, the knitted muscles 
of the huge, kind earth lay in unending interlace- 
ment. And it was all empty. There were no trees, 
no lines of hedgerows to break the void, and lend a 
scale to the eye. From the immediate green fore- 
ground slope after slope melted into grey, and from 
grey to the blue of distance, which fused itself into 
the tender azure of the sky’s horizon, so that the 
line between earth and air was indistinguishable. 
It was as empty as the desert, yet one knew that 
from every inch of it a thousand lives rejoiced in 
the sun of November. Yes, even the knowledge 


A REAPING 


that there would be but few more of such hours 
before winter hurled its armoury of squalls on to 
the earth added, perhaps, to their joy. None could 
have expected such a November as has been ours. 
We have snatched it from winter ; it is our posses- 
sion. 

Yet the colour of the grass, no less than the under- 
lying keenness of the air, savour of the sunless 
months. It is scarcely green ; it has been bleached 
by the torrid months, and Nature is too wise to let 
it shine forth in a fresh coat of colour when so soon 
it will sleep, waiting for the spring. High up in the 
liquid blue, too, of the sky there is the sparkle of 
frost, for all the warm strength of the sunlight. It 
is not summer that floats above our heads, soon to 
descend earthwards, but the frost and cold. Yet 
they bless the Lord also. 

But though I feel all this, feel it in every bone 
and fibre of my body, I know that I feel it more 
when I am doing something else — as, for instance, 
playing golf. I think it must be that one pleasure 
quickens others. The fact of attempting to keep 
one’s eye on the ball as one hits it makes the whole 
of one’s perceptions more alert. If I was taking a 
solitary walk here, with no occupation except that 
of walking, I know quite well that I should not be 
conscious of the same rapturous well-being as I am 
now, when the object of my walk is to hit a small 
piece of indiarubber for three or four miles, hitting 
it, too, as seldom as possible. So it is not the mere 
hitting it that gives rapture, else the rapture would 
be increased by the frequency of the operation. 

120 


NOVEMBER 


Oh, I have been talking on the stroke ! This will 
never do. But it was my own stroke, and Hamp- 
shire flew about in fids in consequence. 

This was at the twelfth hole, and it made the 
match square. Legs, I need hardly remark, was 
playing a pitiful game for him. But on the moment 
— this is one of the inexplicable things about those 
foolish people who play games — my whole mood 
changed. I cared no more at all for the empty, 
glorious downs. I did not mind whether the grass 
was blue, or grey, or green, or magenta. I saw no 
more flaring beech-woods, no more mapped counties. 
There was one desire only in the entire contents of 
my soul, and that was to beat Legs. I did not feel 
as if I even wanted anything so much as that, and 
if Mephistopheles had appeared at that moment to 
bargain for my salvation as the price of my victory, 
I should have signed in my blood or any other blood 
that was handy. But Mephistopheles was probably 
otherwise engaged. At any rate, after being still 
all square at the seventeenth, I drove into a silly 
irrational bunker that ought never to have been 
there at the eighteenth. I took three to get out. 
But we had a heavenly morning. If only . . . 
well, well. And Legs told Helen that he only just 
won, because he was completely off his game ! The 
tongue is an unruly member. Mine is. Had I won, 
I should have certainly told Helen that Legs played 
a magnificent game, and I had only just won. That 
sounds more generous than his remark, but if you 
think it over, you wall see that it comes to exactly 
the same thing. 


A REAPING 


Yes ; it seems an insanity to leave the country 
just now, especially since there is no earthly reason 
for our doing so. Divine things, it is true, are going 
on in town, for our matchless Isolde is conducting 
symphony concerts, and a perfect constellation of 
evening stars are singing together at the opera ; but, 
after all. Legs and I play the ‘ Meistersinger ’ over- 
ture arranged for four hands on the piano ; while, 
for the rich soup of Sloane Street mud and the 
vapour-ridden sky, we have here the turf of the 
downland and the ineffable blue. In fact, I am 
sorry to go, but should be rather disappointed if I 
was told that I was not going. Helen characterizes 
this state of mind as feeble, which it undoubtedly 
is, and says that she is perfectly willing either to go 
to-morrow or to stop on another week, if I will only 
make up my mind which I want to do. But there 
is the whole difficulty : I haven’t the slightest idea 
which I want to do. You might as well say to a 
dog which is being called from opposite quarters by 
two beloved voices : ‘ Only make up your mind 
which of us you like best.’ If it knew, the question 
would be solved. 

Well, the question was solved by tossing up, and 
then, of course, doing the opposite to what we had 
decided the arbitrament of the coin should indicate. 
If it was heads, we were to stop in the country ; and 
since it was heads, that helped us to decide that we 
would go to town. That, too, may seem a feeble 
proceeding, but I do not think it really is. To do 
anything as irrational as tossing causes the mind to 
revolt from the absurdity of abiding by the result. 

122 


NOVEMBER 


The consequence is that a weighty factor for doing 
what the coin did not indicate is supplied ; for you 
never toss unless you are quite unable to decide. 

So for the last afternoon the garden claimed me, 
for not only is the garden the symbol and embodi- 
ment of the country, but to me it is a sort of diary 
almost, since the manual acts of planting and tend- 
ing have got so interwoven with that which made 
one’s mind busy while the hands were thus occupied 
that the sight of this plant or that, of a new trellis, 
or the stacked sticks of the summer’s sweet-peas, 
are, when one looks at them as now, retrospectively, 
on the eve of departure, retranslated back, as are 
the records of a phonograph, into the memories that 
have been pricked and stamped into them. All I 
see — croquet-hoops, flower-beds — without ceasing to 
be themselves, have all become a secret cipher. By 
some mysterious alchemy, something of oneself has 
passed into them. Secret fibres of soul-stuff are 
woven into them. Through the touch of the hands 
that tended them, something from the being of that 
which directed those hands has entered into their 
life, so that next year, it may be, some regret be- 
longing to an autumn day will flower in the daffodils 
of our planting. Hope, I am sure, will flower too ; 
and with how vivid a wave of memory do I know 
what silent resolve went into the cutting back of 
that Gloire de Dijon ! Thus, when in June its frag- 
rance streams in the air, one must trust that some 
fragrance not its own, but of a fruit-bearing effort, 
will be spread about the garden. 

There, for instance, are the croquet-hoops still 
123 


A REAPING 


standing, though it must be a month since we had 
played. A few withered leaves of the plane have 
drifted against the wires, and the worms have been 
busy on the neglected lawn, that speaks only of 
November. But that corner hoop has a significance 
beyond paint and wire. It is the record of the 
telegram that came out to me one morning in late 
September which I showed Legs. After that we 
abandoned the game, and went to the house. It 
may have more for us yet, that corner hoop — more, 
I mean, than that memory of which I have spoken. 
J oy or sorrow may be so keen, so poignant on some 
day yet hid behind the veil of the future, when I 
shall be looking at it, that till the day of my death 
it will never again be seen by my mortal eye without 
rousing an immortal and imperishable memory. It 
is thus, in a manner antimaterialistic, so to speak, 
that men, material things, are woven into the 
psychical web of life, so that, almost before the eye 
has seen them, they have sent the message of their 
secret significance to the brain. 

Everywhere, wherever I look, the tangle of these 
subtle threads is spread, even as on summer dawns 
the myriad spinning of gossamer makes network on 
the grass, so that each is crossed and intertwined 
with a woof of others. There is the bank where I 
lay all one hot July day doing nothing, thinking 
nothing, just lapped in the tide of living things. 
That has gone home. That bank and the hours I 
passed there are part of me now, even as I feel that 
I am part of it, and I have but to look at it now to 
bask again in the absorbing stupor of the midsummer. 

124 


NOVEMBER 


There, in its blades of grass and shadowed turf, is 
written my doing for the day. The bank holds it 
in kind, safe keeping, so that, when God inquires of 
me what I have done with that day that He gave 
me, the bank will be able to answer for me. Nor 
does it tell my secret to the croquet-hoop that holds 
another, nor to the clematis that on that day was a 
heaven full of purple stars spread over the trellis. 
There was nothing in all the treasure of the summer 
so beautiful, so triumphant as that ; but what to me 
now is the memory of the clematis ? The memory 
of a friendship that is over. At least, I was looking 
at it when I know that somebody I had loved and 
trusted was neither trustworthy nor lovable. It was 
as if a friend had pushed back the carpet from the 
boards of the room where he and I had so often been 
merry and intimate together, and showed me, with 
a sort of secret hideous glee, that a sewer flowed 
beneath the floor. Poor clematis ! it is sick at heart. 
Its thin, bare stalk shivers mournfully as this golden 
afternoon begins to turn a little grey with the chill 
wind of evening. 

Ah, if only he had said he was sorry ! If only he 
had said that he knew it was wrong, but that the 
flesh was weak ! If only he had even contemplated 
the step, which to some extent undoes the wrong 
that has been done, I do not think the clematis 
would have shed a single one of its purple stars. 
All of us, saints or sinners, do dreadful things, the 
memory of which is sufficient to make us long to 
sink into the earth for shame. But he only smiled 
behind his hand, and with whispered gusto told me 
125 


A REAPING 

about it, licking the chops of memory. It is that 
which matters. 

That corner of the garden had delayed me long, and 
it was already getting dark when I had gathered up 
and fingered the gossamer threads that lay so thickly 
down the border that led to the gate from which 
descend the steps of the rose-garden. There were 
so many messages there. The bare stalks of phloxes 
and campanulas, Oriental poppies and hollyhocks, 
Japanese anemone and iris — all had something to say. 
Some memories were a little vague, faint, and dim 
even as the odour of the phloxes ; some were tall and 
resplendent like the hollyhocks ; some were vivid as 
the poppies. And then I went through the gate of the 
rose-garden and stood there. There was nothing there 
but the rose-trees ; there was no one there but Helen. 

So the tale of the garden was told, and by the 
time it was finished du^k had begun to deepen, and 
cheerful beckoning lights were gleaming from the 
house. It was time to go in to take up, and with 
what love and alacrity, the pleasant hour of the 
present again ; for it is not ever good to linger too 
long over memories, or for however short a time to 
indulge in regrets, unless those regrets are to be 
built into the fabric of the present, making it 
stronger and more couragequs. All other regrets, 
all other regarding of the past, which says, ‘ It is 
past ; it is irretrievably done/ is enervating and 
poisonous, and but paralyzes our energies. Indeed, it 
is better not to be sorry at all for the unwise, unkind, 
126 


NOVEMBER 


and mistaken things we have done if our sorrow 
tends to unfit us for doing better in the future. 

But just as I crossed the lawn, going towards the 
house, another memory started up out of the dusk 
so clearly that I almost thought that again I heard 
my name called from the garden, and almost ex- 
pected, when I got indoors, to hear again the sound 
of shuffling, unshod feet on the stairs. The memory 
of that mysterious midnight hour, though I have 
not spoken of it again, is seldom out of my thoughts. 
It does not sit, so to speak, in the front row, but in 
the dimness that lies at the back of one’s mind, out 
of which come those vague vapours which are, if 
they have body enough, eventually condensed into 
thought, just as out of thought is coined speech and 
action. There in that dark kitchen of the mind I 
know that the thought of that night has ever been 
simmering on the fire. Something within me is not 
content with the fact that even at the moment that 
the voice cried from the garden, at the moment 
when Legs saw the white face smiling at him, that 
dear soul passed to the other side. There is more 
to come yet. Else — here is the vapour taking the 
shape of thought at last — else why did Legs, who 
scarcely knew her, receive that warning ? No echo 
of any memory of that night, strangely also, has 
ever come back to him. He knows no more about 
it now than he did the next morning, when he asked 
me if I had been sitting up late talking. 

I have told Helen all about it ; I have told her, 
too — for there is nothing so wild and fantastical 
that I would not tell it her — that there is some 
127 


A REAPING 


uneasy guest sitting at my hearth who stays in the 
shadow, so that I cannot see his face. And she 
answered with a serenity that was almost re- 
assuring, saying that, if something more was coming, 
there was still, whatever it was, nothing to fear ; if 
otherwise, the uneasy guest was moonshine of the 
imagination. That seems to cover the whole 
ground. But the fact is that I am afraid of my fear 
— a thing for which it is idle to try to find excuses. 

We are leaving quite early to-morrow morning, so, 
when I entered the house that evening after the 
tour of the garden, I had definitely finished with the 
country for some weeks to come. So, too, had 
Helen and Legs, for tea had already gone into the 
drawing-room. And even as I locked the garden- 
door behind me, I heard a sudden gust of wind 
come and shake the panes, as if this calm, golden 
day had been sent just for us, and that the moment 
we had finished with it the winds, overdue, but 
kindly waiting for us, began to drive their cloud- 
flocks out of the south-west. Nor was the coming 
of the rain long delayed. Even while we sat at tea, 
a sheet of it was flung with a sudden wild tattoo 
against the panes, and there hissed on to the logs of 
the open hearth a few stray drops. Legs paused, 
with his mouth full of crumpet. 

* It makes me feel twice as comfortable as I was 
before,’ he said. * It must be so beastly out of doors.’ 

Legs had just uttered this thoroughly Lucretian 
sentiment, when — 

The door opened, and Mr. Holmes was announced 

128 


NOVEMBER 


I have refrained from mentioning Mr. Holmes 
before because I expected he would come in about 
now, big with purpose. He is a kind little gentle- 
man, about forty-five years old, who lives with his 
sister, and does not do anything whatever. He is 
generally known as the Bun-hander, because no tea- 
party has ever been known to take place for miles 
round at which Mr. Holmes was not handing refresh- 
ments to the ladies. That is his strength, his forte. 
His weakness is just as amiable — though, perhaps, 
hardly so useful — for his weakness is Rank. 

He constantly comes to see Helen — about once a 
fortnight, that is to say (for in the autumn he is 
very busy going to tea-parties) — for the reason, so 
Legs and I believe, that she is the daughter of the 
younger son of a peer. Helen will have none of 
this, and maintains that he comes to see her for 
Herself. Personally, I can behave beautifully when 
Mr. Holmes finds Helen and me alone, but I am 
rather nervous if Legs happens to be in the room, 
for he is quite unable to take his eyes off Mr. Holmes, 
but stares at him in a sort of stupor of wonderment. 
Once (that is a year ago now) he left the room very 
suddenly. Choking and muffled sounds were heard 
from the hall and the stamping of feet. Helen and 
I talked very loud to overscore this, and I trust 
Mr. Holmes did not hear. But when Legs is there, 
I am afraid (it is a sort of nightmare) that I shall 
be overtaken, too, with helpless giggling. If I begin, 
Helen will go off, and I can imagine no way of 
satisfactorily terminating the interview. Because 
if once I began laughing at Mr. Holmes, I do not 
129 1 


A REAPING 


see how I could ever stop. His appearance, his 
voice, his conversation, are all quite inimitable. 

He is small and inclined to stoutness, and has a 
fierce little moustache, so much on end that it looks as 
if it had just seen a ghost. Not long ago he had no 
teeth to speak of; now they are as dazzling and as con- 
tinuous, as Mr. Wordsworth said, as the stars that shine. 
He has rather thin brown hair, which I will swear 
used to be streaked with grey, but is so no longer, 
and he wears three rings with stones in them. One 
is an emerald, so magnificent that it is almost im- 
possible to believe in it. He is dressed in the very 
height and zenith of provincial fashion, and would 
no more be seen in shabby clothes than he would 
be seen without stays. Yes ; I maintain it, and even 
Helen, who was a perfect St. Thomas about it for 
long, has admitted that occasional creaks proceed 
from Mr. Holmes’s person for which it is difficult 
to offer any other explanation. It was a creak, in 
fact, more than usually loud that made Legs leave 
the room on the occasion I have referred to. Down 
his trousers he has the most beautiful creases, and 
all his clothes nearly fit perfectly. He wears brown 
boots with cloth tops, above which when he sits 
down you can see socks with clocks on them 
stranglingly suspended. In the winter he wears a 
hat with a furrow in it, and in the summer a panama. 
He wears a knitted tie (just now it is rather the 
fashion here for young men to have ties knitted for 
them by their friends), which Helen says is certainly 
machine-made, with a pin in it. His shirt always 
has some stripe or colour in it, and his links are 
130 


NOVEMBER 


invariably the same colour as the stripe. To-day 
the links were turquoise and the stripe light blue. 
And from top to toe it is all a little wrong, though, 
since I do not know how clothes are made, I cannot 
tell you what is wrong. The effect, however, is 
that, though so carefully arrayed, Mr. Holmes looks 
like a rather elderly shop-assistant going out on 
Sunday afternoon. 

Mr. Holmes goes out much oftener than that, for 
he may be seen in the window of the club every 
morning from about half-past eleven till one. I 
have often seen him sitting in the window there 
looking at illustrated papers, and smoking a cork - 
tipped cigarette, ladies’ size. Then he goes home 
to lunch, and after lunch either drives with his sister 
in a hired fly, or else, if it is very fine, goes round the 
ladies’ golf-links, which are a good deal shorter than 
the men’s. He has tea at the club, and sits there 
till dinner. Then, after a blameless day, he goes 
home to dine and sleep. I suppose no one in the 
world has ever done less of any description. 

I have alluded to his weakness — rank ; he has 
another, which is gossip. He knows who was 
dining at the Ampses last Wednesday, and who 
lunched with the Archdeacon on Sunday, and how 
the Bishop’s wife is. It is he for whom also the 
fashionable intelligence is written in the daily papers, 
and, though he never goes there, he knows who is 
in town, and who lunched at Prince’s last Sunday, 
or walked in the Park, and how the Marquis of God- 
knows-what is after his operation. (He always 
131 1 2 


A REAPING 


refers to a Marquis as a Marquis, to an Earl as an 
Earl.) But, best of all, perhaps, he loves infini- 
tesimal intrigue, especially if it concerns Rank. 

And here my portentous secret must burst from 
me. For the fact is that for the last three days the 
town has been convulsed, and I have been holding 
it all back, assuming an unnatural calm, so that it 
might all come in a deluge. For three days ago a 
Duchess came here to open a window, or shut a door 
in the town-hall, which had been put up in memory 
of something, and was entertained to luncheon 
afterwards by the Corporation. And on this eye- 
opening occasion Helen was sent in before the wife 
of the younger son of a Baronet. And in conse- 
quence the wife of the younger son of the Baronet 
cut her afterwards, as with a knife ; yet knife was 
no word for it : the averted eye was more like a 
scimitar. Before the assembled company, when 
Helen went to shake hands with her after lunch, 
she cut her, and she turned from her, revolving on 
her own axis like the eternal stars. Upon which, 
very properly, after two days’ heated discussion, 
and a great demand for Debrett, public opinion 
sided with the wifp of the younger son of the 
Baronet, on the ground that Helen took her hus- 
band’s rank, which in this case happened to be none 
at all. What made it worse was that the Duchess, 
who should have known better, being an old friend 
of Helen’s, came to tea with her afterwards in a 
motor-car covered with coronets for all the world 
to see. 

You may imagine that the fat was in the fire after 
132 


NOVEMBER 


that. Helen had no idea why the wife of the 
Baronet’s younger son had cut her, and perhaps 
might never have known had not Mr. Holmes 
dropped in only yesterday and told her, adding 
that he was sure he could clear it up. I was not at 
home when this interview took place, but when 
he entered the room this afternoon, after having 
called only yesterday, it was certain that he must 
have come on this subject. He had a book in his 
pocket, which made an unusual bulge. 

Legs was steeped in wide-eyed contemplation as 
Mr. Holmes had his tea. From time to time I 
glanced at him, and saw that the corners of his 
mouth were faintly twitching. His eye travelled 
from Mr. Holmes’s face to his jewelled hands ; it 
lingered about his clothes, but came back, lover- 
like, to his face. In a few minutes we had learned 
about everybody — how the Lord-Lieutenant of the 
county had driven through in his motor — not the 
Daimler, but a new Panhard — yesterday afternoon, 
stopping only at the fishmonger’s, and taking the 
London road afterwards ; how there had been a 
party at the barracks last night, at which there was 
music, but not very good music, Mr. Holmes was 
afraid ; how the Bishop had not influenza at all, 
but only a bad cold ; how The Pines had been taken 
by the Hon. Alice Accrington, who had a cork foot — 
so sad. A rhinoceros had trodden on the original one. 

I had ceased to be able to look at Legs, but here 
I heard him give a little whimper, as a dog does 
when it wants a door to be opened for it. Helen 
all the time had been of impeccable behaviour. She 
i33 


A REAPING 


had asked just the right questions, and appeared so 
genuinely interested that I felt I had never known 
before of what depth of hypocrisy she was capable. 
Then Mr. Holmes’s wealth of information began to 
grow thin, even as the stars burn thin at daybreak, 
and I knew that he was going to dawn, and that the 
true reason for which he came was going to break 
forth. He put down his cup on the tea-table, took 
a cigarette, and suddenly creaked. 

If you can imagine a sneeze, a cough, a spit, the 
strangled wheeze caused by a fish-bone in the throat, 
and the noise an empty siphon of soda-water makes 
when you press the handle, all combined, you will 
faintly grasp what Legs did. His effort to swallow 
the whole of this mixed convulsion was most praise- 
worthy, though I should think dangerous, and it 
came to my ears only as if someone had done it 
half a mile away. Mr. Holmes, I am sure, heard 
nothing this time, and Legs left the room with his 
handkerchief to his mouth in the manner of mourners 
in the second coach at a funeral. There was no 
sound outside, but soon after a muffled tread over- 
head, where is his bedroom. Then for a moment I 
caught Helen’s eye. She looked so inexpressibly 
grave that I nearly asked her who was dead. Then 
dawn came. Mr. Holmes has a high cackling voice, 
and the bulgy volume in his pocket was ‘ Whitaker’s 
Almanack.’ 

4 I should have come before,’ he said, * but I 
wanted to come to you last, and really the after- 
noon has flown. About Tuesday now. Dear lady, 
you only took your right place. There is no ques- 
i34 


NOVEMBER 


tion about it. I have been to the Mayor, I have 
been to the Archdeacon. Look/ 

He found a page in Whitaker, and gave Helen the 
volume. It was a table of precedence. I saw 
* Eldest sons of younger sons of peers ’ under- 
lined. 

* Look at the next column/ he said. ‘ The sister 
takes the rank of her husband or her elder brother. 
Now see where younger sons of Baronets and their 
wives come !’ 

Far away below eldest sons of younger sons of 
peers, in an outer darkness below even members of 
the fifth class of the Victorian Order, I saw that 
obscure relationship. My emotions of various kinds 
almost suffocated me. Helen was justified before 
all the world. It was her turn to cut the wife of the 
younger son of the Baronet if she chose. 

So we talked very pleasantly for a quarter of an 
hour about the movements of the aristocracy, and 
then Mr. Holmes ‘ rose to go/ His cab was waiting, 
and I helped him on with a very magnificent fur 
coat in the hall, which in the somewhat indistinct 
light seemed to be made of the purest rabbit skin. 
In the dimness of the landing above I thought I 
could see an obscure shadow leaning over the ban- 
nisters which resembled Legs. 

' I hope, after this, your wife will take her proper 
place/ said Mr. Holmes. * Of course, everyone 
knows the Duchess came here to tea/ 

He lit a cigarette, and I heard the bannister 
tremble slightly, as if from an infinitesimal earth- 
quake. 


i35 


A REAPING 


‘ It is so kind of you to have taken so much 
trouble/ said I firmly. 

‘ It was nothing. I am sure you need have no 
further anxiety/ 

I went back to the drawing-room. Helen’s face 
was buried in a sofa-cushion, and Legs came down- 
stairs in three jumps. 

So we laughed till it was time to dress for dinner. 
Occasionally we seemed to be recovering, but then 
somebody said ‘ Creak/ or * Baronet,’ and a fresh 
relapse took place. 

I pity all poor souls who do not know Mr. Holmes. 
It is so sad for them — sadder than the lady with 
the cork foot. Oh, think of it ! This triumphant 
vindication of Helen (which is all wrong, by the 
way) will last him a long, long time. It has been 
a campaign, triumphantly concluded, and I should 
not in the least wonder if he has half a bottle of 
champagne to-night. And after a time the excite- 
ment will die away, fading like a golden sunset, and 
he will settle down to his ordinary life again, and 
read the paper in the morning, and go for a little 
drive in the afternoon, and have tea and toast at 
the club afterwards. And in the spring the Panama 
hat will come out, and the rich fur coat be put away, 
and he will hand strawberries instead of buns, and iced 
coffee instead of tea, and perhaps play a little croquet. 
But this week has been a great week for him — it really 
has. If you want to understand the gloriousness of 
Mr. Holmes, you must take my word for it that 
nothing so engrossing has happened to him for months. 

136 


DECEMBER 



















DECEMBER 


This once-happy family has suddenly returned to 
the pit whence it was digged, and it is impossible to 
imagine any more depressing spectacle than we 
present. Dawn in faint flickers is beginning to 
shine on the wreck, and occasionally for a moment 
or two, though we may be over-sanguine, Helen 
and I can dimly imagine being happy again. Legs 
cannot do that yet ; it is still midnight gloom 
with him. 

The intelligent reader will scarcely need to be told 
that it is the influenza that has blackened the world 
like this. Helen began, and Legs and I followed 
within twenty-four hours. That, somehow, is a relief 
to her, since she feels she did not give it us. As if 
it mattered where it came from ! Besides, per- 
sonally I would rather catch it from her than any- 
one else. Legs has had the worst visitation, because, 
after it was quite certain he had got it, he persisted 
in attending the last night of the autumn opera 
season, did not enjoy it at all, of course, by reason 
of a splitting headache, and was really ill for a day 
or two. I was infinitely wiser. As soon as the 
nymph touched me with her fairy hand I went 
firmly to bed, turned my face to the wall like 
139 


A REAPING 


Hezekiah, and stopped there till the fever was over. 
After five days I tottered downstairs to find an old, 
old woman sitting by the fire. It was Helen. 

I think that was the most dreadful day I ever 
remember. She told me again and again how ill I 
looked until I was goaded into a sort of depressed 
frenzy, and said I couldn't possibly look as ill as 
she. We both had beef-tea in the middle of the 
morning, and to my horror, when it was brought, 
it was brought not by Raikes, my man who is as 
indispensable to this house as is the carburetter to 
a motor-car (for it won’t run without), but by an 
Awful Thing that I never saw before. In answer to 
an inquiry, I was told that Raikes felt very ill, and 
had asked the Awful Thing to bring us our beef-tea 
instead of him. So I sent her back to Raikes with a 
thermometer that he was to be so good as to put 
under his tongue for one minute, and then return. It 
came back recording 102 degrees. I gave the Awful 
Thing the thermometer to wash, and she instantly 
dropped it on the floor. It was, of course, broken into 
twenty million fragments, but I remembered that, 
though I was a worm, I was a Christian worm, and 
said : * Never mind. Please tell Raikes that he is 
to go to bed instantly.’ I then picked up the 
twenty million fragments, and cut myself severely. 
I said ‘ Damn !’ quite softly. 

Helen winced, which was merely intended to 
annoy me, and it succeeded admirably. 

So there we sat exactly like that awful picture 
called ‘ Les Frileux,’ in which an old man and an 
old woman sit apart under a leafless tree. The 
140 


DECEMBER 

ground is covered with the dead leaves. Soon they 
will die, too. 

It is impossible to depict the dreariness of that 
morning. Outside a sort of jaundiced day showed 
the soupy mud that flooded Sloane Street, through 
which motor-buses, which once I thought so fine, 
splashed their way. A few sordid people under 
umbrellas bobbed by the windows, and as the dark- 
ness increased a man with a long stick began to turn 
up the lamps. Then it instantly got rather lighter, 
and another man (not the same one) with another 
long stick came and turned them down again. Upon 
which Egyptian darkness settled down over the 
town, and I must suppose that the first man had 
caught the influenza, for he never turned them up 
any more. 

Helen was not reading ; she was sitting by the 
fire looking mournfully at the coals. This would 
not do at all, and in the intervals of a paroxysm 
of coughing I asked : 

* How is Legs this morning V 

‘ Worse/ said Helen. 

I took up the Daily Telegraph, and read the list 
of the people who were dead. I knew one of them 
slightly. Then my cut finger began to bleed again, 
which reminded me of the Awful Thing. 

' Servants are so ridiculous and tiresome/ I said. 
‘ I should think your maid might have found time 
to bring up our beef-tea, instead of that dreadful 
girl. I don’t know where you get your servants 
from/ 

‘ Barton went to bed yesterday with influenza/ 
141 


A REAPING 

said Helen wheezily. ‘ She is very feverish — worse 
than Legs.’ 

I can’t say why, but this news made me feel rather 
better, so I lit a cigarette. It tasted exactly as if 
it had been made of the green weed which grows on 
stagnant horse-ponds. I felt much worse again at 
once, and was quite sure my temperature was going 
up. But I could not have the mournful satisfaction 
of knowing that this was true, because the ther- 
mometer was broken. And my finger continued to 
bleed. The blood was very bright red — probably 
arterial. Yet, whatever was happening, it seemed 
impossible that things were as desperate as I 
thought them, and I made the excellent determina- 
tion to do something. 

* Will it disturb you if I play the piano ?’ I asked 
Helen. 

‘ Not the least.’ 

I attempted to play the ‘ Etudes Symphoniques,’ 
beginning with the last variation, by reason of the 
sky-scraping spirits of it. I don’t think I played 
any correct notes at all, and Helen (again to annoy 
me) made the noise which tiresome people make to 
show that a wrong note gets on their highly sensitive 
nerves. It consists of a whistling intake of the 
breath. Though I had only played a dozen bars, 
the white notes in the treble were spotted with 
blood, as if I was a Jew and the piano was the lintel 
of the door on Passover night. It was absurd to 
go on playing on a blood-boltered piano, even if I 
could play the right notes, which I could not. So 
again, with the laudable idea of doing something, I 
142 


DECEMBER 


staggered upstairs, brought down a moistened 
towel, and proceeded to clean the keys. I struck 
notes from time to time, and Helen kept on wincing. 

‘ Is that necessary ?’ she asked at length. 

‘ Yes, because I have bled over the piano. Be- 
sides, I’m cleaning it with the soft pedal down.’ 

The door was flung open, and the Awful Thing 
appeared. 

‘ Dinner/ she said, and left the door open. 

We went downstairs. ‘ Dinner ’ in Raikes’ in- 
disposition was huddled on to the table. There 
were pieces of moist fish under one cover. There 
was a ginger pudding under another. There were 
large potatoes under a third ; and under the fourth 
a rich and red beef-steak. Then despair descended 
on me. 

‘ Is the cook ill, too ?' I asked of the Awful Thing. 

‘ Yes, sir/ 

‘ Who cooked this ? Or, rather, didn’t ?’ 

* Please, sir, I did.’ 

Then quite suddenly, both for Helen and me, 
dawn began to break for a little. Here was three- 
quarters of the establishment incapacitated, and the 
Awful Thing was calmly doing everybody’s work as 
well as her own, which was that of a housemaid. 
Helen cheered up at once. 

* Please give me some fish/ she said to me. * It 
looks quite excellent.’ 

I helped her largely and sumptuously. We both 
understood each other at this moment, and I put a 
thumping helping on to my own plate. 

M3 


A REAPING 


Helen, greatly daring, took a greedy mouthful, 
and spoke to the Awful Thing, who was beginning 
to beam largely on us. 

‘ Delicious/ she said to her. * I had no idea you 
could cook so beautifully. You needn't wait : we 
will ring. And you must have help in at once. Will 
you telephone to Mrs. Watkins' agency, asking for 
a — (she paused, and I know she was going to say 
* cook ') — a housemaid ?' 

The Awful Thing smiled from ear to ear, and a 
moment afterwards we heard the insane ringing of 
the telephone. 

* Oh, I couldn't send for a cook just this moment,’ 
said Helen, when the girl had left the room. ‘ She 
was bursting with pride at having cooked this. But 
if I eat it I shall be sick. What are we to do ?’ 

The girl in her enthusiasm had built the fire three- 
quarters of the way up the chimney, though the day 
was muggy and warm beyond all telling. Into the 
heart of the blaze we stuffed large pieces of fish, 
which burned with a blue and oily flame. 

* Now ring,’ said Helen. 

The girl returned after a long pause. 

‘ Please 'm, Mrs. Watkins hasn’t a housemaid to 
send, by reason of so much illness. But she can 
send a cook,’ she said, and her face fell. 

* It’s such a pity, when you can cook so well,’ 
said Helen ; * but we must have somebody. You 
can’t do all the work.’ 

‘ A char and I could manage, ’m,’ she said, 
changing the plates with an awful clatter. 

* Oh, not with Mr. Legs ill/ said Helen. * We 

144 


DECEMBER 

shall have you knocked up next, and where should 
we be then ?’ 

The radiant smile returned to the girl’s face. 

* Give me some steak, Jack/ said Helen, * and a 
potato. How delicious it smells !’ 

The Awful Thing again left the room, leaving, as 
it were, the fragrance of her smile behind her. 

We made no attempt to eat any of the second 
course, but put two large slices of steak, two 
potatoes, and a big spoonful of perspiring cauli- 
flower into the fire. Pieces of ginger-pudding 
followed it to the burning ghaut, and soon the door 
again opened, and coffee was brought in. This was 
an after-thought, I fancy, though ill-inspired and 
gritty. But there was a coal-scuttle. 

I am afraid we both relapsed again after lunch, 
though for a time the shining example of the house- 
maid who had done the work of everybody else 
inspired us to attempt to play picquet, bezique, and 
the piano. But these were all hopeless : it did not 
seem worth while dealing, and, in point of fact, the 
attempt at a duet came to a conclusion at the end 
of the first page, for Helen only groaned and said : 

* I can’t turn over.’ 

But that, I am thankful to say, was our low-water 
mark. 

Sunshine began to shine more strongly on the 
wreck when Legs, two days afterwards, came down- 
stairs, with the cheering remark that he felt so ill 
that he was sure he couldn’t be as ill as he felt. 
Soon after he burst into hoarse laughter. 

i45 


K 


A REAPING 

‘ I shall cheer up when I have counted ten/ he 
remarked. 

Well, on the whole, when it was put simply and 
firmly like, that, it seemed the best thing to do. 
Legs took charge of the cheering process, and 
ordered a basin, soap, and three churchwarden pipes, 
and we blew soap-bubbles, which, though it may not 
be in itself a work of high endeavour, had at least 
the result of making us do something, which is 
always a good thing. So, when that was over, in 
order to contribute to the wholesome atmosphere of 
employment, I brought in and read to him and 
Helen what I had written that morning, and had 
designed to appear in the book you are now reading. 
It was — I will not deceive you — a string (a long 
one) of cheap and gloomy reflections on the muta- 
bility of life, the reality of suffering, and the certainty 
of death. I had taken some trouble with it, but the 
most poignant and searing sentences made Legs 
simply roll in his chair with laughter that was 
noiseless merely because his throat was in such a 
state of relaxation that it could not make sounds. 
But with eyes streaming and in a strangled whisper 
he said : 

* Oh, do stop a moment till I don't hurt so much 
with laughing, and then read it again.’ 

I looked at Helen. She had a handkerchief to 
her face, and her shoulders shook with incontrollable 
laughter. 

* It’s much the funniest thing you ever wrote,’ 
she said. ' Isn’t it, now ? Begin again at “ All 
the pain and sorrow with which we are surrounded ” 

146 


DECEMBER 


— oh no, before that — something about “ It is 
when we are racked with suffering ourselves.” Oh, 
Legs, isn’t it heavenly ?’ 

Legs had recovered himself a little, but still 
drummed with his feet on the carpet. 

* I never knew I could feel so much better so 
quickly,’ he said. ‘ I felt a mere worm when I 
proposed soap-bubbles. I want it all again from 
the beginning, where what you thought was sun- 
light was barred with strange shadows. O Lor ! ’ 

So I gave them this intellectual — or should I 
say spiritual ? — treat once more, and then threw 
the manuscript into the fire, amid the shrill ex- 
postulations of the others. Legs made heroic 
attempts to save it, but fruitlessly, or, indeed, I 
would print it here, as a warning to those who 
do not feel very well to postpone their meditations 
upon life and death until they feel a little better. 
Also, I do not think that one’s reflections on any 
subject are likely to be of much value unless they 
are founded on some sort of experience, and, to 
be quite honest, I had founded my views that 
morning on the mutability of life and the anguish 
of the world on the depression which was the 
result of a feverish cold. They were depressing 
enough, but I do not think that they were of suffi- 
ciently solid foundations. They proved, it is true, 
extraordinarily cheering to Helen and Legs, but 
one cannot be certain that the rest of the world 
would be equally exhilarated. They might be 
taken seriously, though Helen says I need not 
have been afraid of that. 

i47 


K 2 


A REAPING 


Every man, even a pessimist, is supposed to have 
a perfect right to form his own opinions, but if I had 
my way (there is not the least likelihood of it) I 
should establish a censorship of the press, which 
should be in the hands of six young and cheerful 
optimists, who should decide whether such opinions 
were fit for publication. Quite rightly literature of 
an indecent nature, and work which may be sup- 
posed to have a tendency encouraging to criminals, 
is not allowed to be disseminated. I should put a 
similar prohibition on the dissemination of dis- 
couraging books, books which might be expected 
to suggest or foster the opinion that the world is a 
poor sort of place, and that God isn’t in His heaven 
at all. Even if this was proved to be true, I would 
count it criminal to attempt to convince anybody 
of it ; it would be a murderous assault on the 
happiness of private individuals. The law does not 
allow one to poison a man’s bread with impunity, 
so how much more stringently should it forbid the 
poisoning of the inward health of his soul ! Nothing 
but harm ever came from the dissemination of 
depressing truths, nothing but good from the 
dissemination of innocent and joyful beliefs, even 
should it be proved that they had no foundation 
whatever. For if the world is a dreary and painful 
place, so much more need is there of courage and a 
high heart to render it the least tolerable, and if we 
are to be snuffed out like candles when we come to 
the end of our few and evil years, how much more 
is it the part of wisdom to snatch a little happiness 
out of the circumambient annihilation ! 

148 


DECEMBER 


And to think that only this morning I had actually 
tried to commit this crime, and was only saved from 
it by Legs’ unutterable laughter. To be truthful, I 
felt a little offended when he first began to laugh, and 
inwardly hoped that he would soon grow depressed 
and thoughtful as I continued to tell my rosary of 
discouraging things. But I need not have indulged 
that hope ; it was forlorn from the beginning. 

Instead, it made both him and Helen feel much 
better. I am so content to leave it at that. I had 
hoped — I had, indeed — when I wrote those de- 
pressing pages (which I wish to Heaven I had not 
burned) that possible readers might see part of the 
serious side of things under the discouragement of 
my winged words. But now — two days later — I am 
far more content that those two darlings should have 
laughed at what was written with such seriousness, 
than that all those into whose hands the printed 
record of that manuscript might have fallen should 
have sighed once over my jaundiced views about life 
and death, and sickness and mutability. 

Of course, death is an extremely solemn affair, 
but it seems to me now — we are all recovering fast, 
and are drinking hypophosphates, and beginning to 
be greedy again — that the solemnity of it ought to 
have been discounted long ago, if it is going to be 
solemn at all. Everyone, of course, is at liberty to 
take life solemnly from the time he begins to think 
at all. But whatever our attitude towards life is, 
the same ought to be our attitude towards death, 
whether we believe that there is a continuance of 
life afterwards, or whether we are so unfortunate 
149 


A REAPING 


as to believe that there is the quenched candle. 
For in the one case death is but the opening of a 
door into a fuller light, a thing, it is true, that may 
affect one for the moment, since from the weakness 
of the flesh we cling to what we know, while in the 
other death is just extinction, a consummation 
which no pessimist should fear, since while he lived 
he had held so poor an opinion of life. So whether 
we regard life as a pleasant interlude in something 
else, or whether we regard death — a thing unthink- 
able to me — as the extinction of consciousness, I 
cannot believe that he is not a guest who is welcome 
when he comes. Personally I do not want him to 
come for a long time, since I am delighted with the 
world, and it would be most annoying to die now 
when one is just recovering from influenza, and 
hopes to go to the Richter concert to-morrow. But 
whatever one’s belief about the future is, I cannot 
see that there is an essential horror about death. 
I can conjure up horror of some kind about going to 
the dentist, about looking up trains in a Bradshaw, 
since the print is so execrable, and the connections 
so unruly, but I go my journey, or I go to the 
dentist, and get to my destination, or am relieved 
of a troublesome tooth. Life does not seem to me 
the least troublesome, it is true, but let us take it 
that by death I get to my destination, or in any case 
get nearer it. 

Besides, how frightfully interesting ! 

I did not die, but went to the Richter concert 
instead. Legs wished to go, too, but that was 
r 5° 


DECEMBER 


clearly idiotic, and so Helen and I tossed up as to 
which of us should go, and which remain at home. 
I won, and went. 

There was Isolde in his high chair. (Probably an 
intelligent critic will say that Isolde was a woman, 
and I mean Tristan. But I don’t.) He waved 
a little wand, and the spirit of the Meistersingers 
filled the hall. It was not, so it struck me, a 
remembrance only of their harmonious joviality, a 
mere picture of them ; it was they who rollicked and 
made processions in the great thumping triads of 
their march. There they sat, each with his business, 
town clerk, and vintner burgomaster, and lawyer, 
and, best of all, the old tender-hearted shoemaker, 
on whose kindly face upturned to the sky one 
feather of the bird of love had fallen, though it had 
never come and nestled in his bosom. But it was 
not with bitterness that so great a loss had filled 
him ; it had but refined him to a mellow kindliness 
that made all young things love him. There they 
all sat, so the band told me, over their songs and 
their sober carousing, till the others went home, 
and Sachs was left alone with music yet unsung 
echoing in his kind old head, and throbbing in his 
youthful heart. But he knew that such Divine 
melody was not to be realized by him ; some master 
of music had yet to come and put into notes and 
audible harmony that which existed but in the 
temple of his dreams, in the garden of things a man 
may conceive, but may not realize. Then came 
there the gracious young knight, and Sachs heard 
that of which he had dreamed, the song taught by 
151 


A REAPING 

the birds and the choirs of Nature to the ardent 
heart of youth. 

The triumph took wings and soared, lifting Sachs 
with it, him and his yearnings, and that fine old 
music, too, which was his. Inextricably mingled, 
they were knit one into each other, soaring into the 
sunrise. 

Thereafter we were taken to the bleak mountain, 
where should gather the maidens of storm, who did 
the will of Wotan. It was high and exposed above 
the region of trees, and shrill blew the winds over it, 
and the heavens streamed above it. Fast and thick 
rode the army of menacing clouds, for the tempest 
in which the Valkyries rejoice, riding their untamed 
steeds down the swift roadway of the winds, was 
broken out in mad fury. Yelling and screaming, it 
drove in mad circles of wrath round the place where 
the nine maidens should foregather that evening, 
each with the fruit of her day’s quest slung across 
her saddle, each with a hero who should drink that 
night of the wine of the gods, which should pour 
into his veins the fire of eternal life in place of the 
faint mortal blood that had beaten there before. 
Yet it was not love the maidens sought. It was 
danger and death and heroic enterprise that bore 
them so swiftly on their errands, and lit in them a 
fire brighter than love has ever kindled. Their wine 
was the buffet of the tempest, their meat the strong 
winds of God. 

Then there was heard, faint at first, the beating of 
the immortal hoofs in the rush of flying steeds ; from 
152 


DECEMBER 


east and west there shone out remote fires in the 
bedlam of the clouds, increasing, getting nearer and 
more blinding, till through the darkness of the 
tempest could be seen the figures of the maidens 
gathering to their trysting-place, some at the gallop, 
some flying, and all drunk with adventure and 
swift deeds. Each that day had prospered, each 
had a hero at her saddle, swooning now in death, 
but soon to be restored to the fuller life. 

So gathered they, but as yet one was still missing 
— Briinnhilde, the swiftest and best of them all, 
the dearest to the heart of Wotan, for, indeed, she 
was none other than his heart and his inviolable 
will. And while yet the others wondered at her 
tarrying, she came. But no hero had she. She 
but led a woman into the midst of her sisters, for 
pity had touched her fierce heart with so keen and 
intimate a pang that she had disobeyed the behest 
of Wotan, and saved her of the race which he had 
doomed to destruction. . . . The sorrow and the 
pain of the world had entered into her. Henceforth 
no more there would be for her the starry splendour 
of Valhalla, throned on the thunder and rosy with 
the light of eternal dawn. Soon for this her deed 
should another light shine on tower and palace wall 
— the light of the flames that consumed it. 

Tempest, and love, and sorrow, and the doom of 
the immortal gods all made audible in the eternal 
kingdom of the air ! How is it that, when once one 
has heard a miracle like this, one can ever so far 
forget it as to go back to the meanness of little miry 
i53 


A REAPING 


ways ? There are so many big things in the world, 
and though one knows that, and has, according to 
one’s scale, seen and understood their size, yet we 
can still be so gross of perception that one can sit 
down, blear-eyed of vision, to write twopenny-half- 
penny reflections about sorrow and mutability ! 
(And be rather pleased with them, too, until Legs 
and Helen laughed themselves all out of shape.) 

How large a place, too, in that which makes for 
size and the breeziness of living, does Art in some 
form or other occupy for most of us ! Music and 
painting, literature and drama, are great doors flung 
wide to admit one to the sunshine of God. Often, 
even to the spiritually-minded, the avenues of prayer 
and directer communion seem somehow blocked ; 
to others, the majority, they are never wholly open. 
But to any who have an appreciation at all of what 
is beautiful, it must be a dark hour indeed when 
that approach is altogether shrouded and black, 
when neither Angelo, nor Velasquez, nor Shelley, 
nor Wagner, has a candle to give one to light the 
way. Millions of beautiful minds have their ap- 
proach here. To millions all idea of a personal 
God, to be approached directly, seems inconceivable, 
but it seems to me to be one of the perfectly certain 
things in this very uncertain world that the pas- 
sionate worship of beauty, in whatever sort mani- 
fested, is no less a direct invocation than prayer 
and the bent knee. The study and the love for 
* whatsoever things are lovely ’ is as royal a road, 
perhaps, as the other, for the passion for what is 
beautiful is no less than the passion for the only 
i54 


DECEMBER 


Beautiful, and by such as feel that, all that is filthy 
is as unerringly condemned as it is by those who 
call ‘ filthy ’ by another name — ' sinful.' For the 
perception of anything beautiful has to the per- 
ceiver a force of purging, while to the gross sense 
it is a sealed thing. 

‘ O world as God has made it, all is beauty ; 

And knowing this is love, and love is duty, 

What further can be sought for or declared ?’ 

And to that I say ‘ Amen.' 

The ‘ kennel/ as that same magician of words 
said, is 4 a-yelp ' at this. Artists, of whatever sort, 
are supposed to be loose of life. Where that extra- 
ordinary delusion arose I have no idea, unless it had 
its origin in some superficial observer of the manners 
and ways in the Latin quarter of Paris. That 
things not technically parochial may have occurred 
there, who would deny ? But for my part I think 
it just as un-Christian to nag, and to vex, and to be 
unkind as to be anything else under the sun. In 
fact, to put it broadly, I would as soon be a drunken 
and kind man as be a sour and total abstainer. 
Sour and total abstainers will turn on me their eyes 
of smiling pity and horror, but perhaps it is only a 
matter of taste. 

But to be ‘ nice * to people seems so immensely 
important. You may lecture on the Lamentations 
of Jeremiah for hours together, with a battery of 
historical facts to help you, and yet do no particular 
good ; but if you help a lame dog, canine or human, 
i55 


A REAPING 


over a stile, you have been a far better Christian. 
I dare say that word offends some people, so I will 
cancel it, and say that you have been of far greater 
service in a world that has fortuitously come into 
being, and will as fortuitously go out of being. 
Whatever may be the truth about things seen and 
unseen, happiness is quite certainly better than 
misery, and laughter is better than the most edifying 
tears. 

The finger of the gloomy moralist is pointed 
at me. I knew it was going to be pointed — 
and in a sepulchral voice he says : ‘ What about 
death ?’ 

The fact is that I don’t know (nor does he), and 
it is not my affair. While I am alive I prefer to 
drink deep of the joy of life than to speculate about 
what may come next. I can conjure up my death- 
bed as often as I choose, and make it a scene of 
moving pathos and dim vexed doubts. There is 
nothing so easy. I can without the slightest effort 
advance really profound problems as to ‘ what it all 
means,’ since there is nothing so easy as asking un- 
answerable questions. What of the death of the 
wasp which I killed gleefully last August with a 
tennis-racquet ? I haven’t the slightest idea. All 
I know is that if next August another ventures to 
buzz round my head when I am having tea on the 
lawn after a perspiring set, I shall, if possible, kill it 
again. 

If only the gloomy moralist could give me a 
reasonable theory to show why I could not exter- 
minate wasps, I would accept it. But he can’t! 
156 


DECEMBER 


He only says it puzzles him. It puzzles me, too, 
but in the interval I kill the wasp. 

The fact is (degrading though it may sound) that 
I do not really believe that we are any of us capable 
of understanding the mind of the Infinite God. 
Philosophers try to explain little bits of it, and in their 
explanation of the little bit of it bang their heads 
together like children playing hide-and-seek in the 
dark. Hinc illce lacrimce. The poor children have 
terrible headaches. I am extremely sorry, but it 
is, after all, their fault. Instead of playing hide- 
and-seek in the dark, they should go out and play 
in the light ; then no heads would be hit together. 

It is quite maddening to think of the energy ex- 
pended over this hide-and-seek, when all the time 
the garden of the world’s beauty is ready waiting 
outside the door. If you have the instincts of a 
beast, perhaps it is better to grope in the dark ; but 
if you have the rudiments of any other condition, 
go and play. All the beauty that the world holds 
is at your command. All that really matters in this 
world is to be enjoyed very cheaply. Most things 
worth reading can be bought for a shilling or two, 
and if that is not * handy,’ look at a tree instead, 
and absorb the life that shines in each growing twig 
of it. Or if you are musically minded, hear, as I 
have just heard, the glories of the maidens of the 
storm. 

Of course, no one thing is the least more wonderful 
than any other. All that happens, if we look at it 
*at all closely, is a marvellous conjuring-trick. Why 
don’t ducks come out of hen’s eggs ? Is it not 
*57 


A REAPING 


marvellous that chickens invariably issue ? If you 
go a step farther back, and learn something about 
the continuance of type, it becomes even more 
wonderful. * How ’ can be told us, but never 
‘ why.’ And so I am confident in the unanswer- 
ableness of my riddle. Why do sounds like 
those of the violin and the brass in the ‘ Ride of 
the Valkyries ’ convey the essence of storm and 
tempest ? 

Another conjuring-trick of the most delightful 
kind occurred next morning. At twelve o’clock last 
night the streets of London had, without asking 
(thereby reversing the sad tale of Oliver Twist), 
been given a second helping of brown porridge. 
It was ankle-deep on the roadway of Sloane Street, 
thick brown porridge of mud ; then during the night 
the temperature went down, and it froze. The 
result is that for the copious soup we are given a 
clear, dry roadway. There is no mud of any kind, 
not even frozen mud. The street is clean and dry, 
as if Oliver Twist had licked it. But where has 
gone that two inches of obfusc lather ? Has the 
wood-pavement drunk it in ? Has it gone into the 
air ? Has some celestial housemaid, like the Awful 
Thing, been set to sweep the streets, even as she 
has swept the sky, and given us the invigoration of 
frost in exchange for the wet blanket of chilly 
cloud ? Coming back from Richter last night, the 
streets were swimming ; eight hours later (or it may 
be nine) one might walk barefoot across the road, 
or spread one’s dinner there, and get no taint. How 
15S 


DECEMBER 


it will be sparkling on the grasses and brave ever- 
greens at home, turned to diamond spray by the 
red sun of frosty mornings ! 

* O world as God has made it !’ . . . How often 
involuntarily, as if coming from without, that line 
rings in my head ! And how very little we, with all 
our jealousies, and depressions, and bickerings, and 
follies, are able to spoil or dim the beauty that is 
cast so broadly there. Puny as are our efforts for 
good, it really seems to me that our attempts at 
being evil are even more impotent and microscopic. 
We are often as tiresome and unpleasant as we know 
how to be, yet all the time we are swimming against 
that huge quiet tide of the beauty of the world as 
God made it, the knowledge of which is love, and 
beyond which there is no further declaration pos- 
sible. Sometimes, if we are very active indeed, and 
exert ourselves very much, we can stand still or 
even move a little way in opposition to the great 
tide, but soon our efforts must relax, and we are 
swept down again with the current that eternally 
flows from the heart of the Infinite, and returns 
there again in those pulsations that are the life and 
the light of the world. 

It is impossible, indeed, unless we say that evil is 
the vital principle of the world, to think otherwise. 
War there is between the two huge forces, but it is 
just Satanism, and nothing else whatever, that 
makes people say that the world is going from bad 
to worse. If you are so unfortunate as to be a 
Satanist, there is nothing more to be said, and I 
159 


A REAPING 


hope the devil will give you your due ; but if other- 
wise, there can be no other conclusion than that 
good, all that is lovely and fine, is steadily gaining 
ground. For it does not seem reasonable to sup- 
pose that God contemplates some swift heady 
manoeuvre which shall suddenly take evil in the 
rear, and in a moment rout the antagonism. At 
any rate, as far as we can possibly judge, it is by 
quiet processes that He deals with the sum of 
the world, even as He deals with the units that 
make it. For just as nobody has any right to expect 
that the evil in his nature will be suddenly expunged, 
even though the moment should be one of blinding 
revelation, so we should acquiesce in the slow pro- 
gress of the sum-total. For there are only three 
possible alternatives — the first (namely, that the 
progress is from bad to worse), which is Satanism ; 
the second, that there is now in the world (and will 
be) exactly the same amount of evil and good as 
there has always been, in which case you are con- 
fronted with the absurd proposition of two abso- 
lutely equal forces having made this scheme of 
things, which will war to all eternity ; and the third, 
that good is stronger than evil, and is quietly gaining 
ground. 

The objection to the first alternative is that it is 
Satanism — a very fatal objection. The objection 
to the second is that it is so stupendously dull. 
There cannot possibly be any point in anything if 
the two forces are equal. There can be no struggle 
in the mind as to whether one ought or ought not 
to do certain things, if whatever you do or don’t 
160 


DECEMBER 


does not make any difference. There remains the 
third alternative. The objection to that is . . . 
well, I can't see there is any. 

Hours ago this house has been asleep, the house 
in which I write on this early morning of the New 
Year, the house which is home to me, even as my 
own is ; for it is the house — you will have guessed — 
where lives she who is neither dearer nor less dear 
than Helen, and where we always spend the week 
and a little more that begins before Christmas and 
finishes a little after the New Year has been swung 
from the voices of mellow bells. Before midnight 
we sat in the oak-panelled room and played the 
most heavenly games, charades, and insane gym- 
nastic exercises, and table-turning, with terror when 
the dreadful table turned in a really unaccountable 
manner, all consecrated by love and laughter ; and 
then, when the Old Year was to be numbered by 
minutes that the fingers could reckon, we drew 
nearer to the log fire and wished each other that 
which we all wanted for each. Legs' triumphant 
entry into the Foreign Office was no longer capable 
of a wish, since it was already accomplished, so he 
was wished a wife ; and — you will understand that 
we were all very intimate — my mother was wished 
freedom from all anxiety of whatever kind ; and the 
old nurse of ninety years who had acted charades with 
us with astonishing power was wished her century ; 
and I was wished the holding of the frost, so that 
I might skate — they were flippant again — and two 
cousins were respectively wished a miscroscope — one 
161 l 


A REAPING 


is of tender years — and a motor-car; and then, just 
as the clock jarred, telling us there was but a minute 
more to the New Year, it was Helen’s turn to be 
wished, and somebody said, * Your heart’s desire ’ ; 
and she understood. 

Immediately afterwards the clock struck, and 
everybody kissed everybody else, and said ‘ Happy 
New Year,’ and no more. For you must not say 
anything more than that : you must not even say 
‘ Good-night,’ else the charm is broken. So in dead 
silence we lighted bedroom candles, for the ritual 
was well known, and separated. And who knows 
but that all about the house, as in the ‘ Midsummer 
Night’s Dream,’ the dances of the fairies circled up 
and down by the light of drowsy fires ? 


162 


JANUARY 










JANUARY 


A hundred pounds have suddenly and unexpectedly 
appeared on the horizon. People who are very rich 
have not the slightest idea what that means to us. 
People who are very poor have not the slightest idea 
either, because they would probably buy a public- 
house, or good-will, or something of that nature, and 
never have any fun out of it at all. But to people 
who * jog along ’ a hundred pounds is a treat which 
neither rich people nor poor can form any conception 
of. To those who just pay their way, as we do, it 
means several weeks somewhere. The only question 
is * Where ?' At this point in our argument it was 
impossible to proceed. Helen and I were both being 
so unselfish that we couldn’t go on. She said she 
longed to have two or three weeks in Switzerland ; 
I said that what I really wanted was to go to the 
Riviera for a fortnight. Then, as always happens, 
these subterfuges broke down, and we both con- 
fessed that we neither of us really wanted to go to 
where we said we did. She wanted to go to Nice ; 

I wanted to go to the high altitudes. So, with the 
understanding that we were to go where the coin 
said we should, and not otherwise, we tossed up. It 
was high altitudes. 

165 


A REAPING 


His country put in a claim for Legs at the Foreign 
Office, unfortunately, and he could not come with 
us ; but we felt, when we observed the urbanity of 
the French customs-house officials, who obligingly 
shut their eyes to the presence of large quantities 
of tobacco, and the politeness of the railway officials, 
that Legs had probably made himself felt in our 
foreign relations already, and that he was re- 
sponsible for all this very civil behaviour. At Bale, 
however, where we had to change at the awful hour 
in the morning which is neither night nor day, we 
found that Legs’ diplomacy had not yet had time 
to make itself felt, for we were subjected to a search- 
ing scrutiny. Luckily, I had had experience of the 
manners and customs-house officials of Bale before, 
and had transferred my tobacco into my coat 
pockets, thus frustrating the baffled Teuton. But 
I am afraid it gave me certain secret glee to observe 
that my travelling companion of the night before — 
a stout white man, with a name on his labels so 
long that I could not read it, who had snored all the 
time — was caught, and his rich stores of cigarettes 
taken from him, to be sent, I suppose, to Berne, for 
the delectation of the President of the Republic. 

Switzerland is a land that always arouses curiosity 
as to how it came about that a country in which the 
people are so small, so ‘ toy,’ should in itself be on 
so gigantic and marvellous a scale. Is it that the 
living among these stupendous surroundings has 
somehow dwarfed the people, or has Nature, by one 
of her inimitable contrasts, made the human part of 
Switzerland so insignificant in order to set off the 
166 


JANUARY 

vastness of peak and snowfield ? Certainly the 
glib commonplace that national character is influ- 
enced and formed by national surroundings is here 
gloriously contradicted, since, as far as I am aware, 
no Swiss has ever attained to eminence in anything. 
They are a little toy people, who live in little toy 
towns, and make excellent chocolate, and run in- 
numerable hotels on the most economical principles. 
But even then they do not (as one would expect) get 
very rich. They are never ‘ very ’ anything. ‘ But 
the chocolate is excellent,’ said Helen to these 
speculations. 

It requires faith this morning to believe that in a 
few hours we shall be crunching the dry, powdery 
snow beneath our feet, and before sunset be skating 
or gliding down the white frozen road, with puffs of 
snow coming from the bows of the toboggan, for 
here all down the shore of the Lake of Thun the 
country is brown and grey, with scarce a streak of 
white to show that it is winter. Low overhead are 
fat masses of dirty-looking cloud, but between them 
(and this is the door where faith enters) are glimpses 
of the perfect azure which we expect up above. 
Now and then the sun strikes some distant hill- 
side, or, like a flashlight, is turned on to the waters 
of the lake, making of them a sudden aquamarine 
of luminous green. But the weather is undoubtedly 
mild ; the eaves of the wooden toy-stations drip with 
discouraging moisture, and Interlaken, when we 
reach it, wears a dreadful spring-like aspect, and 
people are sitting out of doors at the cafes, and 
appear to find it relaxing. 

167 


A REAPING 


Then the first of these wonderful winter miracles 
happened. There was the flat alluvial land at the 
end of the lake, across which ran the fussy little 
light railway which should take us above (so we 
hoped) the region of cloudland. Grey and puddle- 
strewn was it, with here and there a patch of dirty 
snow stained through with the earthy moistness 
beneath. A low-lying mist was spread over the 
nearer distance, which melted into the thicker 
clouds of the sky itself. It was just such a view as 
you shall see anywhere in the English fen-land 
during February. 

We were looking at this with, I am bound to say, 
a certain despondency. It seemed almost certain 
that we should find dull weather (which means thaw) 
up above, when a sudden draught from some funnel 
of the hills came down, making agitation and disturb- 
ance both among the low-lying mist and the higher 
clouds. The former was vanquished first, and, torn 
to ribbons by the wind, and scorched up by a sudden 
divine gleam of sun that smote downwards, disclosed 
in its vanishing the long, piney sides of an upward- 
leading gorge. The higher clouds, being thicker, 
took longer to disperse, I suppose, for at its farther 
end the gorge was still full of scudding vapours. 
Then suddenly they cleared, and high, high above, 
a vignette of fairyland — the Jungfrau herself, queen 
of the snows — stood out in glacier, and snowfield, 
and peak, against a sky of incredible blue. There 
she stood in full blaze of sunshine, the silver-crystal 
maiden, donned in blue, enough to open the eyes of 
the blind, and make the dumb mouth sing. 

168 


JANUARY 

Then afterwards, as the little Turkish bath of a 
train went heavenwards, how magical and divine a 
change happened ! Inside the steamy carriages, 
smelling of railway-bags, and rugs, and forgotten 
sandwiches, it was not possible to see through the 
condensation on the window-panes, but the blood 
that trots through the body knew the change, and 
took a more staccato note. Then — I suppose that 
travelling stupidity had seized us both — it sud- 
denly occurred to Helen that we might, without fear 
of prosecution, put the windows down, though by 
a printed notice of by-laws of the railway it was still 
defended that we should not agitate ourselves out 
of it. Once a ticket-puncher, exactly like a figure 
out of Noah’s ark, put them scowlingly up again ; 
but with the boldness that this whiff of mountain- 
air supplied, we again lowered them, after a further 
consultation of the by-laws. 

The ineffable change had begun. Soon for the 
moistness of the lowland there was exchanged a hint 
of frost — something that made outlines a little more 
determinate, a little crisper. Then, as we mounted 
higher, there was further change. For dripping 
twigs of the trees there were trees that showed a 
hard, white outline of frost ; for the sullen muddy 
stream there was clearer water, that went on its 
way beneath half-formed lids of ice ; and thinner 
and thinner above our heads grew the grey blanket 
of cloud. 

Then that, too, was folded away, and above us 
was the sun and the sparkling of the unending firma- 
ment. Below it had been like a London fog, when 
169 


A REAPING 


you cannot see the tops of the shrouded houses ; 
now we saw the roofs of the world, the Queen Anne’s 
mansion of Europe, all clean, all clear, just as they 
were when I saw this land three years ago. No tile 
had slipped, no chimney-pot required repairs. The 
top of the world was good. Oh, how good ! 

The clear dry air, the sunset lights on the peaks, 
the liquid twilight (keen as snuff to the nostril), 
from which the sun had gone ! There was the rose- 
tinted Wetterhorn, black Eiger, flaming finger of 
Fins ter- Aarhorn ; or, on more human plane, the 
hiss of skates over the perfect ice, the passage of a 
toboggan, with a little Swiss girl holding in front of 
her a baby sister, and steering with her heels, and 
shrilly shouting ‘ Achtung!’ There was ‘ Madame ’ 
who keeps a restaurant (I do not know her name), 
standing to see the train-passengers come in, and 
shaking hands, and saying, ‘ You shall have wings 
to-morrow, no legs ’ (alluding to an amiable alterca- 
tion of three years ago, when I drew a kind but firm 
sort of line about eating chickens’ legs for lunch 
on four consecutive days) ; and there was the beer- 
man, whose admirable beverage I always drank at 
11.30 a.m., being thirsty with skating ; and there 
was a skater I knew, who attempted a rather swift 
back-bracket for the admiration of the new arrivals 
by the train to see, and fell down in a particularly 
complicated manner in the middle of it ; and there 
was the barrack of an hotel which always smells 
of roasting leather, because people put their skates 
and boots on the hot-water pipes, and right above 
it was the Mettelhorn ; and to the left was the Lady 
170 


JANUARY 

Wetterhorn ; and to the right the smooth, steely- 
looking toboggan-run down into the valley. * Oh, 
world ' I beg your pardon. 

I have omitted to mention the magic word on our 
luggage-labels, ‘ Grindelwald.’ 

Three years ago, I must tell you, among other 
foolish and futile deeds, I made a cache underneath a 
particular tree on the path leading to the Scheidegg, 
consisting, as far as I remember, of chocolate, 
coins, and matches. These insignificant facts I 
published in another place, and since then I have 
received every winter mysterious letters from 
Grindelwald, showing that other people are as 
absurd as myself. My cache, in fact, has been 
found (I gave directions which I hoped would be 
sufficient), and it has been, so these letters tell me, 
enriched by other secret and beautiful things. There 
has been placed there, on separate occasions, by 
separate passionate pilgrims, all manner of store, 
and the very next morning, instead of going to skate, 
Helen and I skulked off with a toboggan to see what 
we should find. A poem on the Wetterhorn, so 
I had been informed, was there, to form the nucleus 
of a library ; there was a tin of potted meat and 
some caramels for the larder ; and furniture had 
been added by a third person in the shape of a lead 
soldier and an ink-bottle, while the exchequer, I 
knew, also had been enriched by at least half a franc 
in nickel pieces. We had debated earnestly last 
night as to what to add to the establishment, if we 
found it, and eventually decided on a handkerchief, 
which is to be regarded by passionate pilgrims as 
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A REAPING 


a tablecloth, a reel of cotton, and a copy of ' Shirley ’ 
in the sixpenny edition, to swell the library shelves. 
This latter was in a small linen bag, to keep it from 
the wet. 

Of course, we did not expect to find all the objects 
that I had been informed had been placed there 
from time to time, for the rule of the cache is that 
you may use what you find there, provided only you 
replace it with something else. The potted meat, 
for instance, one could not expect to go undiscussed, 
and I cannot personally conceive leaving caramels 
uneaten. But in place of those, if only passionate 
pilgrims had played the game, we should find other 
objects. Thus the cache becomes a sort of exchange 
and mart — a reciprocal table laid in the wilderness, 
where you take one dish and replace it with another. 

How it all savours of romance to the childish 
mind ! With agitated fingers you scoop away the 
earth and moss which forms the entrance to the 
cache , under a pine-tree on the empty, frozen hill- 
side, and you know you will find treasure of some 
kind, but what it is you cannot possibly tell. And 
inviolable secrecy must surround and embellish 
your manoeuvres : the cache should not be men- 
tioned at all except discreetly to the elect, for it 
partakes of Freemasonry, the masons of which are 
those who delight in idiotic proceedings. But just 
as three years ago I gave the inventory of the cache 
as it was then, so, in the minds of the idiotic, there 
may be felt some interest as to its inventory when 
the founder again revisited it. Caches, of course, 
are socialistic in spirit, and anybody may appropriate 
172 


JANUARY 

whatever he chooses ; but I should be glad if the 
copy of * Shirley ' is left there. It is such a pleasant 
book to read after lunch, if you are tobogganing 
alone. A book, at any rate, is rather a good thing 
to have in a cache , and the wishes of the founder will 
be satisfied if another book is put there instead. 
But let us have a book. I should prefer that it 
should not be the f Encyclopaedia Britannica/ 

The morning, I think, must have been ordered 
on purpose, for I can imagine nothing so exquisite 
being served up in the ordinary way, a la carte ; such 
weather must have been specially chosen. Not a 
single ripple of air stirred ; an unflecked sky was 
overhead, and the sun, as we set off, just topped the 
hills to the south-east, and sat like a huge golden 
bandbox on the rim of them. The frost had been 
severe in the night, but in this windlessness and 
entire absence of moisture no feeling of cold reached 
one. There was in the air a briskness of quality 
more than magical ; it was as if made of ice and 
fire and wine, and in a sort of intoxication we slid 
down into the valley. Then, crossing the stream, 
since there was water about, it suddenly seemed 
desperately chill ; but no sooner had we mounted a 
dozen yards of ascent again than the same dry 
kindling of the blood reasserted itself. Toboggans 
will not run of their own accord uphill, so I put ours 
under my arm, and for a hundred yards we danced 
a pas de quatre up the trodden snow. We both 
sang all the time, different tunes, when suddenly 
we saw a clergyman observing us from a few yards 
ahead. He had a wildish and severe eye, and we 
i73 


A REAPING 


stopped. David before the Ark would have stopped 
if he had unexpectedly come on that man. He was 
sitting in the snow, and wore a black hat, black 
coat, and black trousers, but he had yellow boots. 
He kept his eye on us all the time that we were within 
sight, and seemed to have no other occupation. We 
neither of us dared to look round till we had left 
him some way behind, neither did we dare to dance 
again. Eventually I turned my head to look at 
him from behind a tree. He was still sitting in the 
snow, not on a rug, you understand, nor on a toboggan, 
nor on any of the things upon which you usually sit in 
the snow. He was not breakfasting or lunching or 
looking at the view. He was sitting in the snow, 
and that was all. I have no explanation of any kind 
to offer about this unusual incident. Helen thinks 
he was mad. That very likely is the case, but it 
is an interesting form of mania. Perhaps by-and-by 
we shall have an asylum for snow-sitters. Or is it 
a new kind of rest-cure ? 

It is astonishing how you can argue about things 
of which you know nothing. Indeed, I think that 
all proper arguments are based on ignorance. If 
you know anything whatever on the subject of 
which you are talking, you produce a fact of some 
kind, which knocks argument flat. It is only pos- 
sible to reason rightly on those subjects concerning 
which no fact, except the phenomenon itself, is 
ascertainable. Had we asked the clergyman why 
he sat in the snow, he would probably have told us, 
and the subject would have ceased to interest us 
conversationally. As it was, we held heated debate 
I 74 


JANUARY 

upon him, just as if he was the Education Bill, for 
a long time. But the unusualness of it merited 
attention and conjecture. And think how divine 
an opening for conversation at dinner-parties, .if 
you know nothing of your neighbour, and have not 
caught her name. 

‘ Did you ever see a clergyman sitting in the 
snow ?’ 

That, in fact, was the outcome of our argument. 
No theory about him would really hold water. He 
was probably a conversational gambit, which might 
lead to much. For instance, in answer to your 
question, your interlocutor might reply in five 
obvious ways : 

1. * I once saw a clergyman, but he was not 
sitting in the snow.' 

2. ‘ I have seen snow, but I never saw a clergyman 
sitting in it.’ 

3. ‘ I once saw a clergyman being snowballed.’ 

4. ' Yes. What are your views about the best 
treatment for the insane ?’ 

5. ' Such strange things happen at Grindelwald. 

Did you know ’ 

Yes ; he was probably a conversational opening 
made manifest to mortal eyes. Anyhow, when we 
returned he was not sitting there. If he had been 
real, he probably would have been — at least, if you 
once sit in the snow there is no reason why you 
should ever get up. Obviously it is your metier. 

Now, everybody who lives in fogs and rainy 
places will fail to understand anything of these last 
deplorable pages. But if they go to the thin clear 
175 


A REAPING 


air of Alps in winter, they will know that this sort 
of thing (given you have the luck to see a clergyman 
sitting in the snow) is invested with supreme im- 
portance. When the hot sun shines on ice, it pro- 
duces some kindly confusion of the brain ; there is 
no longer any point in trying to be clever or well- 
informed, or witty, or any of those things that are 
supposed to convey distinction down below to their 
fortunate possessors : you go back to mere existence 
and joy of life. It is a trouble to be consecutive 
or conduct a reasonable argument ; instead, you 
open your mouth and say anything that happens 
to come out of it. Most frequently what issues is 
laughter, but apart from that, the only conversation 
you can indulge in is preposterous, and the only 
behaviour possible is childish. That is why I love 
these roofs of the world. The intoxication of inter- 
stellar space is in the air. Everything is so light — 
you, your body, your mind, your tongue, your 
aims and objects. The only things that you take 
seriously are the things that do not matter : the 
snow-sitter was one, the cache was another. But 
as we got nearer the cache , we became even more 
solemn than on the question of the snow-sitter. 
There was no telling what we should find there, 
even if we found the place at all. The tree might 
have been cut down since last year ; the whole cache 
might have been rifled by some imperceptive hand. 
There was no end to the list of untoward circum- 
stances that might have despoiled us. 

And so we went through the wood : we came to 
the end of it, and there was a tree — ‘ of many one/ 
176 


JANUARY 

as Mr. Wordsworth prophetically remarked. On 
its roots were cut my humble initials : it was certainly 
The Tree. 

‘ Oh, quick, quick !’ said Helen ; * let us know the 
worst !’ 

The root had arched a little since I saw it last. 
Moss and snow were plastered on it in a manner 
scarcely natural. I plucked the bandage away with 
hands that trembled. We found : 

1. A pencil. 

2. Something sticky, which I believe to have been 
the caramels. 

3. An empty potted-meat tin, with a wisp of 
paper inside it, on which was written : ‘ I ate it. 
Quite excellent.' 

4. A candle-end. 

5. The famous poem on the Wetterhorn done up 
in canvas. (How laudable !) 

6. A Jock-Scot, salmon-trout size. 

7. A paper on which was written : * What’s the 
point ?’ 

8. A cigarette, very sloppy. 

9. A five-franc piece, wrapped up in paper, on 
which was written : ‘ I took 4.50 away.’ 

10. A little wooden pill-box containing a very 
small moonstone. 

I think we were very moderate in our exchanges, 
which is right, since you must always leave the cache 
richer for your presence, and we merely took away 
the pencil and the poem on the Wetterhorn, leaving 
our handkerchief, the reel of cotton, and the copy 
of ‘ Shirley.’ Below the question ‘ What’s the 

177 M 


A REAPING 


point ?’ we wrote, ‘ None, if you can’t see it,’ and 
added, ‘ The founder and his wife visited the cache 
on January 12, 1907. They saw a clergyman sitting 
in the snow. Selah.’ 

Then an awful thing happened. Even while 
these treasures were openly and sumptuously spread 
round us, down the path there came a merry Swiss 
peasant about a hundred years old. He looked at 
us and the treasures with curiosity and contempt, 
and then burst into a perfect flood of speech, of 
which neither of us understood one single word. 
When he stopped, I said politely, ‘ Ich weiss nicht,’ 
just like Parsifal, and he began it, or something like 
it, all over again, with gesticulations added, and in 
a rather louder tone, as if he was talking to a deaf 
man. Until this torrent of gibberish was let loose 
on me, I had no idea how much there was in the 
world that I did not know ; so with the desire to 
reduce his opinion of himself also, I addressed him 
in English. I said ‘ God save the King ’ right 
through, as much as I could remember of ‘ To be 
or not to be ’ from the play called * Hamlet,’ and 
had just begun on * When the hounds of spring are 
on winter’s traces,’ when he suddenly turned pale, 
crossed himself (though it was a Protestant canton), 
and fairly fled down the path. I make no doubt 
that he thought he had met the devil. Anyhow, 
he had met his match at unintelligible conversation. 

But it was clearly no use running risks, for more 
of the merry Swiss might come down the path, who, 
it was conceivable, might not be so much impressed 
by unintelligible sounds, and we hurriedly reburied 
178 


JANUARY 

the treasure, ate our lunch, and turned the bow of 
the toboggan homewards, since we proposed to skate 
all afternoon. It was a year since I had been shod 
with steel. I burned for the frozen surface. But 
it was right to see to the cache first. There are some 
things you cannot wait for. 

We spent three weeks in these divine futilities, if 
anything so utterly enjoyable can be considered 
futile. For my part, I do not believe it can, since, 
as I have already said, to enjoy a thing very much, 
supposing always that it does not injure anybody 
else, is a gilt-edged investment of your time ; for 
enjoyment is not (as is falsely supposed) finished 
with when the thing itself is done and over, for it 
is just then that the high interest of it (though gilt- 
edged) begins to be paid. Until one forgets about 
it (and by a merciful dispensation one remembers 
what is pleasant far longer and far more keenly than 
what is painful), subsequent days and hours are 
all enriched, and therefore made more productive, 
by these pleasurable memories. It is here, I think, 
that a wonderfully fresh and vivid student of the 
human mind — namely, R. L. Stevenson — goes all 
wrong when he says that the past is all of one tex- 
ture. It seems to me — one is only responsible for 
one’s own experience — to be of two textures, one 
strong and the other weak ; and the strong one is 
the memory of things you have enjoyed, of happy 
days ; the other of times when, for some reason or 
other — pain, or anxiety, or fear — the lights have 
been low, and the sound of the grinding not low, 
but loud. The human mind, in fact, is more reten- 
179 


M 2 


A REAPING 


tive of its pleasures than of its pain. In the moment 
of the happening either may seem the top note of 
acuteness, but the echoes of the one indisputably 
live longer than the echoes of the other ; and though 
our consciousness, if you care to look at it that way, 
is largely a haunted house of the dead hours, yet 
happy ghosts are in preponderance, and seem solider 
than the shadows of its dark places ; also (and this, 
I think, too, is indubitable) the anticipation of 
happiness is more acute than the anticipation of a 
corresponding pain. In the future there are two 
textures also, as in the past. 

Since our return this contrast has been rather 
markedly brought before me. There are many 
things I much look forward to ; at the same time, 
there is something ahead which I am dreading. 
What it is I do not know. I think I should dread 
it less if I did. But it is, though quite certain, quite 
vague. I connect it, however, with that evening 
in September when I heard my name called, and 
when Legs saw something which has since been 
expunged from his memory. And here is the con- 
trast : the happiness that lies stored for me in the 
hive of the future is more potent than the bitterness 
that is there. Both are coming — of that I am sure 
— and among the many very happy things which I 
know and expect, I feel there is something I do not 
yet know which is happier than any. It is futile to 
guess at it. One might make a hundred guesses, 
and each would seem feasible of accomplishment. 
But there, at the back of my mind, are these two 
transparencies, so to speak — one sunlit, the other 
180 


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stormy — and it is through them that the events of 
the day are seen by me. They colour — both of 
them — all I do ; but the happy one is the predomi- 
nant one. They do not neutralize each other ; they 
are both there to their full. But I despair at giving 
coherently so elusive a picture as they make in my 
own mind. But, though elusive, it is intensely real, 
and for the first time I neither can, nor do I desire 
to, speak to Helen about this thing which is so often 
in my mind. It is incommunicable. 

But after these Swiss weeks there was not much 
time for me to think about this, as it was impera- 
tively demanded, by reasons over which I have no 
control, that I should exercise my mind on the ex- 
tremely difficult art of the composition of English 
prose, which incidentally implies doing two things 
at once ; for not only have you to invent your lively 
and inspiring tale, but you have to tell it in a certain 
way. You may choose at the beginning any way 
of the hundreds that there are of telling it ; but in 
the key in which it is originally pitched, in that key 
it has to remain all the time. As a matter of fact, 
it probably does not, and goes wandering about in 
other modes and scales ; but every book ought to 
be in the one key in which it opens, just as a picture 
ought to be in one key. It is within the writer’s 
liberties, of course, to write other books in other 
keys, and I think he is perfectly justified in largely 
contradicting in one work what he has unhesitatingly 
affirmed in another, but in each his point of view 
has to be consistent throughout. 

The thing is not quite so easy as it sounds, and it 
181 


A REAPING 


is further complicated by a very real difficulty. 
Every story that is worth reading at all is bound to 
record change in the characters and general attitude 
of the people with whom it deals. The jaded author 
has to keep his eye on each, and see that he behaves 
after some atrocious battering with which fate has 
visited him in a different manner than before this 
visitation took place. If he is living in any sense 
of the word, the event will have altered him. He 
will view things differently, and therefore behave 
differently. Yet all the time he is the same per- 
sonality. It were better for him that he should be 
as adamant to the blows of circumstance than that 
the inner essence which is individuality should be 
uncertainly rendered ; and, like the dexterous Mr. 
Maskelyjne with his spinning-plates, the scribe has 
to keep, his eye on all his puppets to see that none 
lapse itfito stagnation, and to poke them up with his 
industrious pen. 

It is here that the complicated question of con- 
sistency comes in which just now is worrying me to 
bewilderment. Dreadful and stinging events are 
happening to a most favourite puppet of mine. 
Providence is dealing with her in a cruelly ironical 
manner, in a way that makes the poor distracted 
lady take quite fresh views of a world she thought 
so warm and kindly. Yet it must be the same per- 
sonality which has to be shown sitting behind these 
changed feelings and directing them all. That is 
the consistency that has to be observed. Otherwise 
it ceases to be one story, but becomes a series of 
really unconnected short stories, with the technical 
182 


JANUARY 

absurdity that the heroine in each has the same 
name. 

Yet there is this also : it takes all sorts to make a 
world (at least, a world otherwise constructed would 
be an extremely dull one), but It, It itself, Life, lies 
somewhere in the middle of us all, and is the centre 
to which we approach. We, the all sorts which 
make the world, view it very differently, though we 
are all looking at the same object. And here a 
simile, a thing usually unconvincing, may assist. 
What if in the centre there is something like a great 
diamond, blazing in the rays of the sun ? I, from 
the south, see soft blue lights in it ; you, from 
the west, see a great ruby ray coming out of the 
heart of it ; another on the north says, * This diamond 
is emerald green while from the east it seems of 
transcendent orange. So far, it is quite certain that 
we are all right, for the world, so to speak, refracts 
God, making Him many-hued, even as white light 
is refracted by the triangle of a prism. And then 
let us suppose circumstances enter and shift me, 
who have been on the south, where I saw blue, to 
the west, where I see red. The whole colour of the 
world is changed to me, and yet there is no incon- 
sistency. The same Ego honestly sees a changed 
colour. There would, on the other hand, when my 
place was shifted by circumstance, be grave incon- 
sistency if I continued to declare that I still saw blue. 
I do not. My eyes tell me it is red. Just now my 
eyes told me it was blue. But I have not changed, 
nor has the great diamond changed ; it is merely 
that the refracted light has taken another colour. 
183 


A REAPING 


It is just that which one must perceive in the 
telling of a story. A person who sees blue all his 
life probably sees nothing at all, nothing, anyhow, in 
the least worth recording. He is bound as the wheel 
of circumstance goes round to see things in other 
lights. But that is not inconsistency ; it is the truly 
consistent. Who wants, after all, for ever to draw 
the same conclusion from the same premises ? 
Only fossils, and possibly molluscs. 

But pity the sorrows of the story-teller ! The 
quality of the red has to be of the same quality as 
the blue. The same fire which strikes to the south 
will indubitably strike to all other points of the 
compass, and when X is wheeled north, he will not 
see the same green as Y sees there. He saw it 
through the alchemy of his own mind ; it will be 
green, but nobody else’s green. Or if it is, he 
has no individuality to speak of. At least he 
belongs to a type that sees everything through 
the eyes of others. That is generally labelled 
conventional, and there seems no reason to change 
the name. 

How I laboured during those last ten days of 
January, and how little result there seems to be ! 
Only — I console myself with this — the real labour 
of writing does not chiefly consist in the effort of 
putting things down, but in the moral effort of 
rejecting them. There is nothing easier than to 
fill pages and pages with improving reflections or 
inspiring events. But having done that, it is neces- 
sary to sound the tuning-fork and see if, as I said 
at first, the story is in tune, if the key is kept. 

184 


JANUARY 

Usually it is not. On which the fire ought to make 
to itself a momentary beacon, or the waste-paper 
basket be replete. But the pile of numbered 
pages should in any case be starving. That, as a 
matter of fact, is my sole argument that I have 
justified my existence during these ten days. I 
have really worked a great deal, and the waste- 
paper basket could say how generous has been its 
diet. I have really left out a very great deal, 
and I hasten to forestall the critic who will say 
that I should, in order to act up to this excellent 
standard, have left out the rest. I do not agree 
with him. 

The key of which I have spoken has to be 
preserved, not only in matters of consistency in 
character-drawing, but in style as well. If you 
lead off with verbiage from the Orient, the East 
must continue, I submit, to dye your paragraphs 
till the last page is turned. Though you may have 
also at your command pure wells of the most limpid 
simplicity, you will have to reserve them for some 
other immortal work ; they will not mix with the 
incense and heady draughts from the East. Or 
should you fancy a mysterious Delphic mode of 
diction, Delphic you must be to the end. But — as 
if all this was not so difficult, that, like Dr. Johnson, 
we almost wish it was frankly impossible — inter- 
woven in your Delphic or Oriental narrative there 
must be a totally different woof — namely, the 
thread of the spoken word, the speeches that you 
put into the mouths of your various characters. 
And the written word, be it remembered, is never 
185 


A REAPING 


like the spoken word ; the two vocabularies, to begin 
with, are totally distinct, and though I would not 
go so far as to affirm that the spoken word ought 
to be ungrammatical, it should, if it is to recall 
human speech, be colloquial, conversational. In 
interchange of ideas by means of the mouth real 
people do not use fine language, especially when 
their emotions are strongly aroused. Then, instead 
of becoming high-flown and ornate in their speech, 
real people go to the opposite extreme, and in- 
stinctively use only the very simplest words. When 
this is stated, it seems natural enough, but you will 
find it very seldom practised. Novelists have a 
tendency to let their puppets employ magnificent 
high-sounding words to express the intensity and 
splendour of great emotion ; in fact, you may gauge 
the strength of their emotions, as a rule, by the 
sonorous quality of their adjectives. I believe the 
very opposite to be the truth of the matter ; people 
in the grip of passion do not use beautiful or highly- 
coloured words ; above all, they do not, like Mr. Wegg, 
‘ drop into poetry/ Yet nothing is commoner than 
to find prose degenerating into blank verse in the 
spoken records of emotional crises, as if blank verse 
was a sublime form of prose. Little Nell is continu- 
ally half-way between prose and poetry, so also is 
Nicholas Nickleby when his indignation is roused. 
In fact, in some of his scenes with Ralph they both 
forget themselves so much in their passion that 
torrents of decasyllabic lines flow from their lips. 
But, on the other hand, the language of narrative 
should undoubtedly grow more coloured, more vivid 
186 


JANUARY 

in such descriptions as are the setting of some very 
emotional scene. Yet it should not depart from its 
original key. . . . Well, as Mr. Tulliver said, * it’s 
puzzling work talking.’ 

But though the days have been so full, I have seen 
everything, everything through the two trans- 
parencies that seem drawn between external hap- 
penings and me. 


187 













FEBRUARY 



































FEBRUARY 


The seasons, according to the literary and artistic 
view of things, have been rather out of joint this 
year. The autumn was not a time of mellow 
fruitfulness at all, because all the green things upon 
this earth had exhausted themselves in the long hot 
summer, and had no more spirit left to be fruitful 
with. Then January in England had been of the 
usual warm mugginess and mists which poets say 
are characteristic of autumn, but which in reality 
characterize winter. Indeed, I doubt if winter was 
ever a time of hard frosts and sparkling snow, which 
is the artistic ideal, and I am disposed to believe 
that that version of it was really brought from 
Germany by the Prince Consort, and popularized by 
Charles Dickens. Then after the mists came the 
mellow fruitfulness, for I myself saw strawberries in 
flower on February 2, and on February 9 Helen 
came in saying she had found a real strawberry. 
That was strange enough, though perhaps the 
finding of an unreal strawberry would have been 
stranger still, so I said, ' Where ?’ and she said, 
‘ On the strawberry beds, silly.’ 

Therefore I started up, leaving a most important 
and epoch-making sentence unfinished (and I have 
191 


A REAPING 


never been able to remember what the end of it was 
going to be), because I wanted to see the straw- 
berry, and write to the Field about it. So she said, 
' Are you going out already V and I said, ‘ Yes, 
just to see the strawberry, and write to the Field , 
saying I have.' 

Then she pointed to half-way down her person 
(since we are so abstemious of words that indicate 
the anatomy below the throat), and said : 

‘ Would X rays help V 

Being extremely clever that morning, of course I 
understood, and reviled her for eating an unnatural 
phenomenon. It was criminal ; she might as well 
have found the sea-serpent or the North Pole, and 
eaten it. But as usual she was artful, and led the 
conversation away to daffodils, which were behaving 
in a manner nearly equal to that of the strawberry- 
plant. One, indeed, was in bud (a thing incredible, 
but true), and I supposed she had eaten that, too. 
That led us back to the strawberry again, which she 
was not even sorry about, for she said it was far 
more interesting to be able to write to the Field to 
say she had eaten a strawberry on February 9 than 
that I should be able to say I had seen it. So I 
very kindly gave her my pen, and said : 

‘ Write quickly.’ 

She said : 

' Oh, but I am only a woman ; I can’t. They 
wouldn’t put it in.’ 

^ I wish you hadn’t put the strawberry in,’ said I. 

‘ I think I shall wish that, too, before long,’ said 
she. 


192 


FEBRUARY 


I only mention this in order to show the utter 
unreasonableness of my wife. If I want to write 
to the Field, and say there was a strawberry in my 
garden on February 9, she will allow me to say that 
though I did not see it, she ate it. (She certainly 
would not have eaten it if I had seen it.) But she 
will not write to say she ate it, like a true woman, 
j She says it does not matter, but added with a 
I changed voice that she was afraid it might. It did, 
for the fruitfulness of the season was not so mellow 
;■ as might have been wished. 

Yes, once again spring has begun to stir in the 
fiery heart of the world ; once again the breath of 
Life blows the embers that seemed all winter to be 
but grey and lifeless cinders, and from the centre 
the glow spreads, till that grey surface of ash is 
; alive with flame again. And as the flames shoot 
; upwards they are like rockets, rising from over the 
whole face of the world. At present they are but 
going upwards, those slender lines of flame, which 
are the sap that is rising through branch and leafless 
stem until it reaches the very ends of the twigs. 
Then these rockets will burst in stars of leaf and 
opening flower, till the vast illumination is again 
complete. But in the warm soft February morning, 
though I feel and know that this is so, I cannot help 
my thoughts going back to the other side of things. 
What of the illumination of last year ? It is 
quenched, dead, and even while the world is getting 
ready for the next one there still lie broadcast the 
ashes and fallen sticks of the last rocket-shower. 


193 


N 


A REAPING 


However many more gladden the world, even though 
to all infinity life was incessantly and beautifully 
renewed, yet I cannot forgive the perishing of a 
single flower. I know well that the material is 
indestructible, that of life and the death of it is 
born fresh life, so that we are quite right to say that 
life cannot be destroyed. But what of the individual 
rose, what of that one purple star of clematis that 
twinkled on the end of the stem I hold in my hand ? 
Though it may be transformed, and will be trans- 
formed, into a myriad other things, so that by its 
death it is transfused into a hundred other flowers, 
and courses through the veins of life for ever, yet it, 
that individual object, will be seen no more. Its 
individuality is completely lost ; it figures in new 
forms, not its own. 

It is quite certain also that the same things 
happen to our bodies. The grass grows thick on 
the graves of those we have loved, and the roots of 
the roses penetrate deep. I saw once on the 
crumbling, sea-devoured East Coast of England the 
thing itself under my very eyes, which made it real 
to me in a way that nothing had ever done before. 
For a churchyard stood there on the very edge of 
the sandy cliff, and one night, with noise of huge 
murmurous thunder, an acre of it slid down into 
the sea. Next morning I visited the place, and 
there, sticking out of the cliff, were the bones of the 
dead that had been buried there. A ruin of roses that 
had sprawled and trumpeted over the churchyard 
gate, which had been plucked in half by the fall, lay 
on the ground, and I wondered how the trees had not 
194 


FEBRUARY 


slipped with the rest of the landslide, until I saw. 
Their roots had lain just where the fracture of the 
earth occurred, and in the exposed face of the new 
cliff I saw their anchorage. One was wrapped round a 
thigh-bone, another had made a network among ribs 
... it was all horrible and revolting. And that has 
happened to the million dead who have lived and 
loved, whose limbs have been swift to move, who 
have drawn rapturous long breaths of this keen sea- 
scented air, whose eyes have been bright and mouths 
eager when they met, lover and beloved. This is 
all — this ruin of red roses on the grass. 

There is nothing in the world more certain than 
this, and one may as well face it. Helen will die, 
and I shall die, and one of us will die first. And the 
other will sometimes see a grave with the grass green 
over it, and roses triumphant thereon. For we 
have settled most things at one time or another, 
she and I, and the manner of our funerals and what 
happens after has passed under discussion. We 
have decided definitely against cremation, because 
it seems such a waste of tissue, and we are both of us 
going to be properly buried, the one close to the 
other, so that the same rose may bloom from us 
both. But she will have roses and strawberries on 
her grave, so that the Sunday-school children may 
pluck and eat them, while I, on the other hand, am 
going to be a spring-man, and have daffodils, for 1 
feel no leaning, as I have said, towards Sunday- 
schools. Here lies the difficulty : she wants a rich 
clayey soil for her roses and strawberries, and my 
daffodils will demand not clay but sand. Also 
195 


N 2 


A REAPING 


she is going to plant purple clematis by my head, 
and clematis likes sand too. We have not yet 
perfectly decided where we are going to die, but it 
seems probable that the survivor will stay in the 
same place as the survived. But I want purple 
clematis, since it was when I saw that that I knew 
somebody whom I had thought to be a friend was 
false. Indeed, I have done all I could to forgive, 
but I think a clematis that feeds on me may make 
it surer. 

Our funerals will shock the neighbourhood, I am 
afraid. I am going to have the A flat Fugue and 
Prelude blared on the organ (it is time somebody 
began to learn to play it) at that distressing moment 
when my coffin is wheeled out of the church, simply 
to show that I have enjoyed myself enormously. 
Great Heaven ! I should as soon think of having a 
dead march of whatever kind played over me as I 
should let them play the works of Mr. Mendelssohn. 
I shall have had (whatever happens) an immensely 
good time. It seems to me much fitter to return 
thanks for that than to remind people that my poor 
body is dead, which they knew already, or why did 
they come to my funeral service ? As for requiems, 
I will have none of them. Whatever happens, /, 
my body at least, cannot possibly lie quiet in my 
grave. The dear flowers planted there will see to 
that. 

Oh, my God, my God, what unanswerable riddles 
you set us ! Even this body, and what happens to 
it, is so occupying a subject. I don’t really care 
what happens to mine : it may be set up in an ana- 
196 


FEBRUARY 


tomical museum if it will teach anybody anything ; 
but Helen’s. . . . Somehow, when I come out of the 
valley of the shadow, something of that must wait 
for her ; or, if she has gone through that passage 
first, I shall not know myself unless at the end of it, 
when the darkness lifts a little, I shall see grey eyes 
looking at the procession of those passing over, and 
meeting mine, and saying somehow, ‘ I am here/ 
She must be there (is it not so ?) waiting on the 
eternal shore for me. 

There she must be. I can’t help what I believe ; 
that is the one thing in oneself which one can never 
change. And Dick will be there, and Margery . . . 
what a splendid day ! 

Then the one horrible certainty descended on me 
again. In so few years we shall all — our bodies, I 
mean, the appearance by which we recognize each 
other — not be our bodies at all, but part of the fibre 
of other living things which are having their day, 
even as we have had ours. It is so now with Dick 
and Margery, so how shall I know them ? Are they 
to be just voices in the air, presences that are felt ? 
Is that all ? Shall I never see again that quiver on 
Margery’s mouth, which means that a smile is ready 
to break from it ? I don’t want incorporeal 
presences. I want Dick and his crooked nose, and 
Margery’s smile. . . . 

Then, on this warm February morning I must 
suppose that I went down into Hell. Dead leaves 
and flowers, it was certain, were transformed into 
fresh living forms, the bones, too, and flesh of dead 
197 


A REAPING 


animals, and of men and women, passed again into 
the great machine of life, and were served up in new 
transformations, so that of the individual body 
nothing at all was left. That is bad enough ; I shall 
never see Margery and Dick again as I used to see 
them. Helen will pass, too, into other forms . . . 
that is bad enough. But this is infinitely worse. 
What of the individual soul, the spirit that we love ? 
Will that, too, as analogy grimly insists, be put 
back again into the principle of eternal life from 
which it came, so that its identity, too, is lost, 
and lives but only as the autumn leaves of last year 
live in the verdure of the next spring ? With every- 
thing else that happens ; the bodies of those we love 
even, a cruel thing surely, but certainly true, are 
used up again to make fresh forms of life. Why 
should we suppose that God makes any exception in 
dealing with the souls of men, the individuals ? 
Every other form of life He uses and re-uses . . . the 
world is but a lump of modelling clay, with which 
He beguiles the lesiure of eternity, making now one 
shape, then crushing it all up and making another. 

So this is all that the promise of Eternal Life 
amounts to, that we shall pass back into the crucible, 
and issue forth again as bits of somebody else ! It 
seems to me a very mean affair ; frankly, it seems a 
swindle. It is a poor trick to make us puny little 
creatures love one another, and try to be kind, and 
console ourselves for the evil days and the sorrows 
of the world with thoughts of the everlasting day 
that shall dawn for us all, if that everlasting day is 
nothing more than the day that is here already; if 
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FEBRUARY 


the souls whom we have believed are at rest in some 
ineffable peace and content, or, on the other hand, 
through further suffering are getting nearer, ever 
nearer, to the perfection and flower of their being, 
have already passed into other forms of life, so that 
Dante and Beatrice are themselves no longer (as 
we should call ‘ themselves ’), but have been infi- 
nitely divided into soldiers, sailors, tinkers, and 
tailors. In that sense they may be said to be alive 
still, but it is a very paltry sense. They (what we 
mistakenly call ‘ they ') are as dead as if they had 
never been. 

It is all very well to say that Dante is immortal 
by reason of his deathless verse ; that is all very well 
for us, but how is it for that fiery soul which is split 
up into a thousand other bodies ? When he thought 
to open his eyes on the Mystical Rose as the dark 
waves of death slowly drew back from his emanci- 
pated spirit, it was all a dismal mistake. No 
Beatrice awaited him ; she, too, is split into a million 
other forms of life. They were absorbed back into 
the central fire, and a spark of Dante’s soul went 
into this man, and another into that, so that in this 
sense there is eternal life for him. But in no other ; 
the Dante which we mean was formed out of other 
lives, and into other lives he went. The man is 
there no more, and there is no Beatrice. There will 
be nothing of us either, unless you mean that at 
some future time I am alive because part of me has 
become perhaps a murderer, and another part a 
politician, and another a housemaid, for all I know. 

The February sun was, warm ; you might almost 
199 


A REAPING 


call it hot. A little wind pregnant with spring 
moved through the bushes ; the snowdrops, those 
pale heralds of the triumphant march of the new 
year, were thick in the grass where we had planted 
them, Helen and I, last autumn, so that they should 
give us the earliest news of the returning tide of 
life. And to me this morning they brought but 
bitter news, for they spoke not of the returning of 
life, but of the thousand deaths which made them 
alive. They pointed not forwards towards the glory 
of the many-coloured summer, but back to the 
innumerable decay of the autumn. And the quiet 
garden which I loved, the tiled mossy roof which I 
had called home, became the place of death, even as 
last autumn death had called to me from it, and had 
been seen by Legs, and had made the dog howl. 
Was it this that was hinted at by those dim fore- 
bodings which for months had never been absent 
from me ? Was the fear that crouched in the 
shadow ready to spring taking form now ? It 
seemed to me that the logic which had turned the 
world to hell was irrefutable ; I expected some 
shattering stroke that should blot out sunshine and 
sensation from me for ever, proving that I and my 
logic were right. I had guessed the horrid secret 
of the world ; I was like a spy found with the plans 
of the enemy’s fortress on me, and must die, lest I 
should communicate them. I said that to myself ; 
I said ‘ Enemy’s fortress,’ meaning the world where 
I had loved and been loved. ‘ Enemy,’ mark you ; 
I knew what I meant. The world was the enemy’s 
fortress. 


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FEBRUARY 


And then, thank God — oh, thank God ! — before 
that which was impending happened, I said to 
myself that I was wrong. I did not at the moment 
see where I was wrong, but I knew that I must have 
made some gross and awful mistake. Things could 
not be as I had imagined them. And the moment 
I said that to myself the darkness lifted a little. 
It was all dark still, but the quality of the darkness 
changed. And then, unbidden as a tune that sud- 
denly rings in one’s head, a few words made them- 
selves recollected. And they were, * If I go down 
into hell, Thou art there also.’ 

At that I caught a glimpse again of this dear 
garden and house, as I had seen and known them. I 
do not suppose that this blackness and loneliness 
of spirit which I have tried to indicate could have 
lasted more than a few minutes, as measured in the 
world of time, but time has nothing to do with the 
spirit. In a second, as computed by the unmeaning 
scale of hours and days, the soul may live a thou- 
sand lifetimes or die a thousand deaths. Redemp- 
tion may be wrought there in an infinitesimal 
fraction of a moment, or in that same fraction a soul 
may damn itself. For it is not the moment which is 
anything : it is the instantaneous choice which 
therein sums up the infinite series of deeds which 
one has already done, and thoughts which one has 
harboured. And the message that leaps round the 
world on electric wires is a sluggard to choice. My 
choice at this moment was between the truth of 
what I had been elaborately thinking out and the 
truth of the words that rang in my head. There 
201 


A REAPING 


was reason on one side ; there was just It on the 
other. And what was * It ’? Just that which, 
very faintly, but quite audibly, said that I had 
come near to blasphemy. There are many names 
for it : we all know its visitation, though it is 
obscured sometimes because we encourage the 
Devil, who comes to us all in many forms, and can 
take the most respectable disguises, like those of 
intellect and mind. But perhaps the simplest 
name and the truest for It is the Grace of 
God. 

Then, in the same moment (I am lumbering in 
words, and trying to express what I know cannot 
be said), I saw that Helen was already half-way 
across the grass, coming towards me. She held a 
telegraphic sheet in her hand, and there was in her 
face a gravity infinitely tender, and quite quiet, 
and quite normal. I had seen it there once before, 
when the news came of her father’s death, which 
was sudden. 

‘ Legs won’t come down this afternoon/ she said 
gently. ‘ We have got to go up to him.’ 

And then she showed me the telegram. 

It was not many hours before we knew all there 
was to be known. Legs had started to ride down 
from town, and turning into the King’s Road from 
Sloane Square his motor bicycle had skidded, and 
he had fallen under an omnibus. A wheel had 
passed over him. 

He had a letter or two, which identified him, in his 
pockets, and he had been taken, since it was so near. 


202 


FEBRUARY 


back to the house in Sloane Street. When we got 
there he was still alive. 

His room was at the back of the house, and we 
were allowed to go in at once. He lay there, quite 
unconscious, and in no pain, for the only thing that 
could be done for him was to keep him like that. 
The bedclothes were not allowed to touch him, and 
a round wooden frame was under them. There was 
no hope at all. 

His bed ran out into the middle of the room, and 
Helen and I sat one on each side of it, while a little 
distance off was the doctor, who just watched him. 
Sometimes he got up and looked at him, sometimes 
he softly left the room, returning as quietly. And 
in those hours of waiting, for a long time I was con- 
scious of nothing except the trivial details of the 
room itself. I suppose I had been there before — 
ah ! yes, of course, I had, when Legs had the in- 
fluenza in the winter — but it was not familiar. 
Yet it was just like what I should have expected 
Legs’ room to be, and in a moment I found I knew 
it as well as I knew him. There was a pile of 
letters on the writing-table, a bag of golf-clubs in 
the corner, an enormous sponge on the washing- 
stand, and on the dressing-table a most elaborate 
shaving apparatus — a metal bowl, a little Etna for 
hot water, a half-dozen razor blades in a neat case, 
with a sort of mowing-machine handle. He had not 
packed them, since he was only going to be with us 
for a couple of days, and he could never have 
used all those blades once each on that smooth 
chin. . . . 


203 


A REAPING 


He had been, as I remembered now, to a fancy- 
dress ball the night before, and his wardrobe, gaping 
open, showed the hose and ruffles of the Elizabethan 
period, while hanging up by them was a small 
pointed beard and a high head-top, with long and 
rather scanty brown hair. ‘ For the point is/ Legs 
had said rather shrilly, ‘ everyone will say, " Shakes- 
peare, I presume,” and I shall say, “ How dare you ? 
I am Hall Caine !” And if some people are a little 
cleverer and say, “ ‘ The Bondman/ I suppose ?” I 
shall say, “You seem to have forgotten William 
Shakespeare.” Perhaps you don’t think it funny. 
But then, you see, you are not going to the ball/ 

No ; we had not thought it very funny, and 
Legs had been rather ruffled. He told us we had 
spoiled his pleasure, but if so, it must have very 
quickly become unspoiled again, for — it was only a 
week ago that he had conceived that idea — he spent 
a boisterously hilarious evening afterwards. But, 
how I wish we had not spoiled his pleasure even for 
that moment ! As if it mattered whether it was 
funny or not, so long as it amused him. Helen had 
said it was rather a cheap sort of joke. . . . And just 
then her eyes, too, saw the fancy dress hanging up in 
the wardrobe, and the moment afterwards she looked 
across to me. And then she left the room for a 
little while. She, too, I am sure, had thought of that. 

I had a friend once who was killed in a railway 
accident. A year afterwards I was staying with 
his mother, and one evening, when we were alone, 

204 


FEBRUARY 


she began crying gently. ‘ Jim took his lunch with 
him to eat in the train that day/ she said to me 
soon, * and he had asked me to put him up an 
orange. But I forgot.’ 

That is the pathos of little things. Yes, you 
dear soul, weep a little over the forgotten orange, 
and let Helen weep a little because she said Legs’ 
joke was cheap. And then let us think of the bigger 
things — the love and the loving-kindness that have 
been ours, that bright, boyish spirit that made 
mirth in the home. Even now let us try to thank 
God for what has been. You know what Legs was 
to us — a sort of son, a sort of brother. 

All that afternoon we sat there, hearing London 
rumble distantly around us, and little stirrings and 
creakings came from different parts of the room. 
Now the blind flapped, now a curtain sighed, or, as 
often happens in spring-time, a board of the flooring 
gave a little sharp rap, some infinitesimal particle 
of sap still lingering in it, perhaps, and hearing the 
heralds of spring blowing their horns outside. Only 
from the bed there came no sound at all : he was 
still sunk deep in that sleep which the doctor hoped 
would join and be one with death. If he woke at 
all, there was the chance that he would suffer 
blinding, excruciating pain. On the other hand, he 
might come to himself, just at the last moment of 
all, when pain would be already passed. 

The doctor was saying this in the hushed whisper 
with which we speak in the chamber of death, though 
there may be no real reason why we should not 
speak openly, when I heard a little stir from the 
205 


A REAPING 


bed, and, looking round, I saw that Legs’ eyes were 
open, and that he was moving them this way and 
that, as if in search of something. Helen had seen, 
too, and next moment she was by him. He recog- 
nized her, for there was welcome in his eyes, and 
then, turning his head a little, he saw me. The 
doctor meantime had moved to the head of the bed 
and looked at Legs’ face very intently. Then he 
made a little sign to me that I should come up to 
the bed, and he himself went and stood by the 
window, looking out. 

And I understood. 

Then Legs spoke in his ordinary voice. 

‘ Wasn’t it bad luck ?’ he said. ‘ My bicycle 
skidded, and the omnibus 

‘ What is happening to me ?’ he asked quickly. 

4 Is it ’ 

Helen laid her hand on his head. 

* Yes, my darling,’ she said. ‘ But you are not 
afraid, are you ?’ 

For a moment the pupils of his eyes contracted ; 
then they grew quite normal again. 

4 No,’ he said quickly. 'I’ve had an awfully good 
time. Oh, and it was a great success — Shakespeare, 
you know.’ 

Then a shadow seemed to pass over his face and 
his eyelids fluttered. 

‘ Now ? Is it coming now ?’ he said. 

‘ Yes, my darling,’ said she again, and kissed him. 

Legs lay quite still for a moment with closed eyes. 
Then he quickly opened them again, and made as 
if he would raise his head. 

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FEBRUARY 


‘ Buck up, you two, won’t you ?’ he said. 

From outside there came the dim roar of London, 
and little noises crept about the room. But from 
the bed came no sound at all. 

Two days afterwards we went down home again, 
arriving in the evening, and the body rested that 
night in his own room down here, to be taken next 
day to the churchyard, which the sun blesses more 
than any other place I have ever seen, and over 
which the grey Norman tower keeps watch. His last 
charge to us had been to ‘ buck up,’ and I do not 
know how it was, but it seemed to us both as if he 
was still liking us to ‘ buck up.’ So, in so far as 
we found it possible, we did what Legs wished us 
to do. 

But to-night he would have been here, making 
the third of a merry table, and when the servants 
had come in for the last time, bringing us coffee, it 
was not possible not to remember that, and Helen 
rose. And when she spoke, her voice trembled. 

‘ Is it very foolish of me ?’ she asked. ‘ And do 
you think Legs will mind ? But I feel as if I can’t 
face to-morrow, unless I go and look at the place 
where we shall put him. It is quite warm outside. 
Jack. Oh, let us go out and look at it. It will 
seem more natural then. I think I shall “ buck 
up ” better if I see it first. ’ 

So we went across the garden, and through the 
place of roses, and through the gate on the far side, 
and through the field which bounded the church- 
yard. There was a great yellow moon just risen, 
207 


A REAPING 


and shadows were sharp-cut, so that there was no 
doubt when we came to the place that had been so 
newly dug. His uncle, Helen’s father, lay there ; 
the two graves were side by side. 

So we sat there in silence for some time, very 
still, for a rat ran on to the mound of earth 
by the graveside, and sat there, smartening itself 
up, brushing its face and whiskers with nimble 
paws. The shadow of the tower swung just clear 
of the place, and sharp-cut in the light was that 
oblong hole in the ground. There was nothing as 
yet to be said, for Helen was crying quietly to 
herself, and I could not stay those loving tears. 
Once she said to me : ‘ Oh, let us buck up !’ But 
then she silently wept again. 

You see, I know Helen. I knew that there was 
nothing of bitterness in her crying. Tears of that 
sort were not opposed to the bucking up. Legs did 
not mean that he wanted us not to miss his dear 
companionship. He only wanted us to stand up 
and be cheery, not be bitter or broken. But since 
Helen felt she could face to-morrow better if she 
faced the scene of it, why, that was all right ; it 
was bucking up. 

Then in a few little sentences we talked of the 
next day. There should be the A flat Fugue — no 
funeral march — and we would have no funeral 
hymns, but just one Psalm, ‘ The Lord is my Shep- 
herd,’ and one hymn after all that had to be done 
was over ; so then we would sing ‘ Adeste Fideles,’ 
Helen thought, for it is always Christmas since the 
first Christmas Day. 


208 


FEBRUARY 


Helen just moved as she sat there on the edge of 
his grave when we had settled this as if to go home 
again, but 

And then I told her all that I had thought three 
mornings ago — all the doubts that merged into cer- 
tainty, all the logical conclusions. Whether I then 
at that moment inclined more to the side of the 
devil or of God I do not know, but in any case I 
told her all ; and then she put her arms round me. 

* Yes, dear/ she said, ‘ but in hell He is there 
also. And we are all there sometimes, and it is but 
the lowest step of the beautiful stair to heaven/ 

The moon had swung behind the tower, and we 
sat in the darkness of its shadow. 
v * It is all so simple/ she said. ‘ It all depends 
upon what you believe, not what you think or what 
you reason about. Do you believe that we bury 
Legs to-morrow ? Do you believe that he is dead, 
or that he has ceased to be an individual ? You 
may reason about it, and ask me, as you asked 
yourself, how you will recognize him if his body has 
become grass and flowers ? I am quite content to 
say that I have no idea. You see, one doesn’t know 
all God’s plans quite completely, and sometimes we 
are apt to think that if one doesn’t know the plans 
about a certain thing He hasn’t got one. We put 
our intelligence above His. That is a mistake/ 
v And we sat in silence again ; then Helen spoke, 
asking me an extremely simple question. 

' What does faith mean if you are right about 
it ?’ she said. 

‘ It means nothing. It is without meaning.’ 

209 o 


A REAPING 


‘ And are you prepared to abide by that ?’ 

Again there was silence. She sat a little apart 
from me, so that her questions came from the dark- 
ness; they were put impersonally, so to speak, not 
by Helen, but just by a voice. 

‘ Do you believe that Margery and Dick are 
nothing now except grass and flowers, and perhaps 
a little bit of the lives of other people ? Do you 
really believe it ? And is Legs nothing now ?’ 

It was quite still. We had come to a very 
sequestered corner of the great house of life to talk 
about these things. In front was the shadow of the 
grave, and over it now lay the shadow of the tower. 
Once from the grave’s side a few pebbles detached 
themselves and fell rattling to the bottom, and I 
had no answer to this. Three days ago I had asked 
myself the same questions, and what I call my brain 
answered them ; but now it gave no answer. Some- 
thing, I suppose, had made it uncertain. 

‘ How can the wheel of an omnibus hurt Legs ?’ 
she asked. * It can do no more than hurt his 
body.’ 

Then she came closer to me again. 

4 And what does love mean ?’ she said. 

I think Legs must have enjoyed his funeral next 
day, because it was so extremely funny, and I think 
by this time that you know enough about him and 
Helen and me to allow us all to be amused at it. 
We had sent a note to our Vicar saying that we 
should like the A flat Prelude, and the Psalm, and 
the hymn which I have mentioned. He came in 


210 


FEBRUARY 


person, not to remonstrate, but to put on to us the 
correcter attitude. Death was a solemn occasion. 
There was none so solemn, and the Hymns Ancient 
and Modern provided some very suitable verses to 
be sung — * Now the labourer’s task is o’er,’ for 
instance. (Legs a labourer, who was the most gor- 
geous player at life that has ever been seen !) 
Besides, surely a Christmas hymn was out of place, 
when it would be Ash Wednesday in no time. I 
said feebly that a Christmas hymn was surely always 
in place ; but dear Mr. Eversley looked pained, and 
Helen at once yielded. She was sure that the 

* labourer’s task ’ was most suitable. 

Then about the Psalm. There were two Psalms 
already provided for the Burial Service, and surely 

* “ The Lord is my Shepherd ” struck a different 
note.’ So said our Vicar. That was undeniable. 
And when should we sing that Psalm ? Then Helen 
was firm, and said that we thought we should go 
back into church at the end of the service, and — 
well, just sing it. It was rather good to end with. 
But Mr. Eversley looked even more pained than 
before. He had never heard of such a thing being 
done. That point was left undecided for the 
moment, for there was clearly something even more 
crucial to come. 

It came. 

Ever since the organist had heard of Legs’ death 
he had been most diligent at Chopin’s Funeral March, 
of which he had of his own initiative bought a copy 
in order to be able to perform it. The organist in 
question, who was also the schoolmaster, had had a 

2 1 1 O 2 


A REAPING 


sort of distant adoration for Legs ever since a year 
ago he had seen him drive a golf-ball two hundred 
and sixty measured yards. Since then Legs had 
played with him once or twice, giving him enormous 
odds, and the distant adoration had ripened into a 
nearer one. ‘ He was such a pleasant young gentle- 
man,’ was the upshot of it. And the dear man had 
bought Chopin’s Funeral March, since he wanted to 
play something ‘ more uncommon ’ than the Dead 
March in ‘ Saul ’! 

Here Helen and I were completely at one. There 
should be no A flat Preludes ; it was to be Chopin’s 
Funeral March. 

There remained the question of the Twenty-third 
Psalm. Oh yes, it would strike a different note, 
that was quite true ; so there would be no going 
back into church, but we should have Chopin’s 
Funeral March and * Now the labourer’s task is o’er.’ 

The Vicar did not exactly beam when these things 
were settled, but he was visibly relieved. He shook 
hands with us both, and said : 

‘ Terribly sudden, terribly sudden. At two pre- 
cisely.’ 

(Oh, Legs, how you would have enjoyed that ! 
We did, too, for you told us to buck up. And it was 
so funny, after all we had planned !) 

The Vicar’s call had been made quite early, and 
it was scarcely twelve when he went away ; but to 
us both it seemed as if Legs had been waiting some- 
where upstairs till he went in order to laugh over it 
with us. It was as if he had been waiting on the 
landing, fresh from his bath, with just a dressing- 
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FEBRUARY 


gown on, so that he could not appear when other 
people were there, but might come down barefooted 
when they had gone. He must have been so amused 
at it. How he would skip into the drawing-room, 
afraid of prowling housemaids, to find us alone, and 
say, ‘ Sorry I haven’t got much on, but I had to 
come down after my bath.’ Yes, after his bath. 
It was so that it seemed to us. That wholesome 
spirit had been washed, we thought, by what is 
called death. It was fresher, more jubilant than 
ever. And on the Vicar’s departure down he came 
to join us again. I have no other words for it. 

There was more to come, for hardly had the Vicar 
gone when it was announced to us that Mr. Holmes 
had called, and might he see one of us for a moment 
only. I felt that Legs was cornered now. He 
would have to stop here, hide behind the piano or 
something. I hoped he would behave himself, and 
not make me laugh. So Mr. Holmes came in. 

I never saw anybody so wonderfully attired. He 
was all in black, including his gloves and his stick, 
and above his small neat buttoned boots when he 
sat down I saw a black sock. That may only have 
been accidental, but no accident would account for 
the fact that his cuffs had a neat black border about 
half an inch wide. I wondered if he had blacked 
himself all over like the enthusiastic impersonator 
of Othello. 

He had ventured to intrude on our grief, but only 
for a moment. Here Helen dropped her handker- 
chief, and they both bent down to pick it up and 
213 


A REAPING 


knocked their heads together, and I almost thought 
I heard a little stifled gasp from behind the piano. 
But Mr. Holmes had received no notice of the 
funeral, which he had understood was to be to-day, 
and did not know if we wished it to be quite private ; 
if not, he would esteem it a privilege to be allowed 
to pay his last respects. And here little Mr. Holmes 
gave a great gulp, and could not get on. 

‘ I did like him so much/ he said, after a moment. 
‘ Two. Thank you, I can let myself out !’ 

And he walked away on tiptoe, as if it was most 
important not to make a noise. 

It was one of those sparkling February days, 
sunny and windless, and the air was full of the 
chirruping of birds. There was a moment’s pause 
at the gate of the churchyard, a moment’s silence. 
Inside the church the organ ceased ; then came great 
simple words : 

‘ I am the Resurrection and the Life.’ 


214 


MARCH 



MARCH 


Helen and I have a failing, though you may not 
have thought that such a thing was possible. It is 
a foolish weakness for old bits of rubbish. We can 
neither of us without anguish and unutterable rend- 
ings bear to throw old and useless things away. 
The weakness has to be got over sometimes, but 
we keep putting the work of destruction off, just as 
one puts off a visit to the dentist, with the result 
that when it comes to pass we find that it would 
have been far better to have done it long ago. 
However, if we did not occasionally tear things up, 
and throw things away, the house would become 
uninhabitable, so this morning we vowed to each 
other to spend the hours till lunch in the work of 
destruction. Our rubbish collects chiefly in the 
room that is called mine, where she has a knee-hole 
table with nine drawers. She opened these one 
after the other. They were all full, and despair 
seized her. 

‘ I can't,’ she said. ' Here are nine drawers all 
quite full of heart’s blood. O Jack, look !’ 

And she brought across to me a photograph I had 
taken of Legs jumping the lawn-tennis net. He was 
sitting in the air apparently in an easy attitude 
217 


A REAPING 


One knee seemed crossed over the other, and his 
mouth was wide open. 

* It will be harder than ever this year/ she said, 
half to herself. ' And there are nine drawers 
full !' 

* Circumscribe the drops of heart’s blood as they 
come,’ said I. * Don’t think there are nine drawers 
full. Only keep thinking of the particular thing 
that has to be kept or thrown away.’ 

* Oh, but it’s only the fact that there are nine 
drawers full that makes it possible to throw any- 
thing away at all,’ said she. 

‘ Hush, woman !’ said I. 

Personally, I am extremely methodical over the 
work of destruction. I clear a table and dump 
upon it a pile of heart’s blood. This I sort into 
three heaps, one of which is for destruction, one 
for preservation, and one for further consideration. 
I proceeded to do so now. 

v There were many pieces of string. Throughout 
the year I keep pieces of string, because I know I 
shall use them. As a matter of fact, when I want 
a piece of string I cut it off Helen’s ball, and never 
use any of the bits that I have saved, because I 
don’t know where they are, and they would prove 
to be the wrong length if I did. So on the day of 
destruction I consign them to the dust-bin, and 
begin to collect again immediately. Then there was 
a pill-box full of soft yellow powder, which Legs 
and I had collected from the little cedar-cones at 
some house where we were staying in the autumn. 
That I put on to the heap of destruction, but trans- 
218 


MARCH 


ferred it to the heap of consideration. Then there 
were a dozen little bits of verd-antique which I had 
picked up years ago on the beach at Capri, and 
which I had periodically tried to throw away. But 
I never could manage it, and this morning, knowing 
it was useless to strive against the irresistible, I 
made no attempt whatever to steel myself to their 
destruction, but put them at once into the pile that 
was predestined unto life. There was a chunk of 
amber that I had picked up at Cromer, equally im- 
perishable ; yards and yards of indiarubber tape that 
is the filling of a rubber-cored golf-ball ; a small 
bottle with a glass stopper, clearly impossible to 
throw away, since it might come in useful any day, 
and how foolish I should feel if this afternoon I 
wanted a bottle with a glass stopper, and had to 
send into the town for one, whereas, if I had been 
less iconoclastic, I might have airily produced the 
exact thing needed out of the left-hand top drawer. 
Then came a little tin box full of pink powder, which 
I concluded was rouge. This was puzzling. 

* When did I use rouge ?’ I asked Helen. 

‘ I don’t know. Was it Legs’, do you think, 
when he acted the Red Queen last year ?’ 

No, I couldn’t throw that away. The Red Queen 
had been a piece of genius. And next came the 
telegram from him to me saying that he had passed 
into the Foreign Office. Then there was a vile cari- 
cature of myself at the top of my so-called swing at 
golf — quite unrecognizable, I assure you, but . . . 

Then came a mass of letters, receipted bills, and 
accounts rendered. Accounts rendered always fill 
219 


A REAPING 


me with suspicion, and I have to hunt among unpaid 
bills to find the items of the account rendered, as I 
feel a moral certainty that this is an attempt to 
defraud me. But they are invariably correct. But 
these and the receipted bills, which had to be 
docketed and tied up together in a bundle, took 
time. Probably, however, I could tie them up with 
one of those many pieces of string which I had so 
diligently collected. By a rare and happy chance I 
found one that would do exactly, and tied them up 
with a beautiful hard knot, and put them on the 
predestination heap. A moment afterwards I found 
several more to join the same packet, split my nail 
over trying to untie my beautiful knot, and had to 
go upstairs for nail-scissors to cut it smooth, and 
brought them down to cut the knot. No other piece 
of string in my collection would do, and so I cut a 
piece off Helen’s ball, for she had left the room for 
the moment. 

Then I came upon a large quantity of boxes of 
fusees, all partly empty. How it happens is this : 
I go to play golf on a windy day, and, of course, 
have to buy at the club-house a box of fusees. 
These, on my return, or what remains of them, I 
methodically put in a drawer on reaching home. 
By an oversight I forget to take them out again 
when I play next day, and so buy another box, 
which I similarly place in a drawer. And if you 
play golf four or five times a week on these downs, 
where there is almost always a high wind, it follows 
that in the course of a year the amount of partly 
filled boxes of fusees which you collect about you is 
220 


MARCH 


nothing short of prodigious. I did not know how 
great a supporter I was of home industries. 

My methodical mind saw at once how these had 
to be treated. Of course, throwing them all away 
was out of the question, and the right thing to do 
was to produce out of every dozen of partly filled 
boxes some eight or nine completely full. This plan 
I began to put into practice at once. 

It was necessary, of course, to find how many 
matches a full fusee-box contained, but they are 
awkward to pack, and some seemed to hold ten and 
others only seven ; so when Helen came back, the 
table was covered, among other things, with fusees. 
So I waved my arms violently, and said : ‘ You shall 
not !’ This was because the female nose, and the 
male nose if it is unaccustomed to tobacco-smoke, 
likes, positively likes, the smell of fusees ; but to 
anyone who smokes tobacco the smell of them is, 
for some reason, perfectly nauseating, and that is 
why we only use them in the open air. 

Then Helen's mean nature asserted itself. She 
said, ‘ Oh, I forgot you don't like the smell,' and 
soon after (not at once, mark you) called my atten- 
tion to some non-existent object of horticultural 
interest out of the window. I turned, and in a 
moment she had lit a fusee, and positively inhaled 
the sickening perfume of it. I only wish she had 
inhaled it all. 

The upshot was that we took a turn on the lawn, 
while the room with open door and windows re- 
covered from its degrading odour. 

' How were you getting on ?' she asked. 

221 


A REAPING 


‘ Not very well. I decided to destroy some string. 
I nearly destroyed a pill-box with some cedar-flower 
dust in it. But I reserved that. At least, I think 
I did/ 

‘ Why ?’ 

' Legs and I collected it, and I know Legs wouldn’t 
have thrown it away, so I can’t.’ 

Helen was silent a moment ; then, 

' Do you miss Legs very much ?’ she asked. * His 
bodily presence, I mean, of course.’ 

* Of course I do, just as you do. I miss him all 
the time. Oh, he is in the room, and he laughs at 
us, or with us. I know that.’ 

‘ Then what do you miss ?’ she asked. 

* The young body about the house.’ 

Then Helen said : * Oh, you darling !’ 

That sort of remark is always extremely pleasant, 
but I had no notion of her artfulness. I am glad 
to say that she has often said it before, so that it 
was not particularly stupid of me not to guess that 
it meant anything especial. And with her artful- 
ness she changed the subject to that which I hap- 
pened to be thinking about, thus making no transi- 
tion. 

‘ I gave up,’ she said. ‘ I found all my things 
were so connected with Legs that I couldn’t destroy 
them. It is just what you said. We want to keep 
the young thing in the house, since we are getting 
old — yes, it’s no use saying “ Pouf !” — and I can’t 
destroy anything connected with him. So shall we 
move our rubbish straight into Legs’ room, and 
make a sort of young museum ? Then, when we 
222 


MARCH 


feel particularly middle-aged, we can go up there 
and sit among the young things. If we don’t do 
that, we must clear out his room as well, and I 
can’t see how we can. There are rough copies of 
letters to that dreadful Charlotte ; there is a letter 
in his handwriting, there on his table, beginning— — ’ 

‘ Beginning “ You’re a damned fool !” ’ said I, 
* " but I don’t intend to quarrel with you.” Did 
you mean that one ?’ 

* Then you have been there, too ?’ she said. 

‘ Why, of course, every day. I go when you 
attend to household affairs after breakfast ; you go 
when you say you are going to bed. Didn’t you 
know ?’ 

‘ Certainly I did, but I thought you didn’t know 
that I went there,’ she said. 

* Ditto,’ said I. 

There was a huge rushing wind out of the south- 
west, and we stood a little while inhaling the 
boisterousness of it. All spring was in it, all the 
renewal of life. 

‘ How Legs is laughing at us !’ she said. 

‘ I don’t care. Let’s have the museum of young 
things. Let’s put there all the things we can’t 
throw away. Oh, Helen, there are photographs, 
too ! There is one of him in his last half at 
Eton. . . . There is one of you and me when the 
Canadian canoe sank gently, and as we stood dripping 
on the shore he photographed us. And I photo- 
graphed him and you when you said you would 
skate a rocking-turn together, and fell down. 
Heart’s blood, heart’s blood ! There ought to be 
223 


A REAPING 

a law which makes it a penal offence to keep photo- 
graphs.’ 

I suppose I had got excited, for Helen took my 
arm and said : 

' There, there !’ 

But even that did not do. 

* Oh, the pity of it,’ I cried — ■* the pity of it ! 
Why didn’t he take a train to come down ? Why 
didn’t that omnibus pull up ? He was ours, and 
he would have married, and still been ours, and 
there would have been young things about the 
house again.’ 

I suppose I had torn away from her, for now we 
were apart, facing each other, at the end of this ; 
and she smiled so quietly, so serenely. 

* Do you think that I don’t feel that, too ?’ she 
asked. * Can’t you see that the wife who is mother 
of nothing must feel it more than the husband who 
is father of nothing ? Besides, you make your 
books — you are father to them. What do I do ? 
I order dinner.’ 

And yet — it seems to me so strange now — I did 
not see. There was bitterness in her words, but all 
I thought was that there was no bitterness in her 
voice, or her face, or her smile. I did not quite 
understand that, I remember, but Helen has told 
me since that she did not mean me to. She wanted 
— well, her plan evolves itself. 

And then she took my arm again. 

'It is nearly a month since dear Legs went 
away,’ she said, * since we have actually heard and 
seen him. The last we heard was that he wanted 
224 


MARCH 


us to buck up. Do you know, I think we have 
bucked up. But we have been doing that singly; 
we have somehow lived rather apart, dear. Surely 
it is better to buck up together. I think the 
idea of a young museum is a very good one. 
Let us put all the things we can’t throw away into 
his room. We have never used the room before, 
because Legs might always rush down and want a 
bed ; and so let us keep it like that. We might call 
it the nursery.’ 

And so the young museum was started. Helen 
had all manner of tender trifles for it, all connected 
with Legs. She had all sorts of things I had known 
nothing of : little baby garments, Legs’ bottle, some 
baby socks. Then there were child things as well : 

* Alice in Wonderland,’ the depressing Swiss family 
called Robinson, a far better Robinson called Crusoe. 

And thus the nursery grew. ' Treasure Island ’ 
went there ; a rocking-horse, which I remembered of 
old days, was brought down from an attic. Oh, 
how well, when I saw him again, I remembered him ! 
He had a green base, nicely curved, on which he 
pranced to and fro, and my foot had once been under 
it when he pranced, so that I lost a toenail, and was 
rewarded with sixpence for stopping crying. He had 
a hollow interior, the only communication with 
which were the holes of the pommels, and on another 
dreadful day my sister had dropped a threepenny- 
bit into one of them, with some idea of making a 
bank. A bank it was, but the capital was irre- 
coverable. The coin was still there, for now I took 
225 


p 


A REAPING 


up the whole horse with ease, that steed which had 
so often carried me, and heard a faint chink from 
his stomach. He had a wild eye, too, and flaming 
red nostrils, and the paint smelt just the same as 
ever. .And Helen produced a Noah’s ark, in which 
the paint was of familiar odour, but different, and 
there was Ham without a stand, and Mrs. Noah in 
a neat brown ulster, and Noah with a beard, and 
one good foot, but the other was a pin. Elephants 
were there with pink trunks (I never could under- 
stand why), and enormous ducks with pink bills 
(which now threw a light on the colour of the 
elephants’ trunks, since I suppose that a brush full 
of pink was indiscriminately bestowed), and small 
spotted tigers, and nameless beasts which we called 
lynxes, chiefly because we did not know what they 
were, and did not know what lynxes were, so they 
were probably the ones. The ark itself had Gothic 
windows, and a mean white bird, with a piece of 
asparagus in its mouth, painted on the roof, probably 
indicated the dove and the leaf. 

We must have spent two days over the nursery, 
and during those days we concentrated there all the 
young things of the house, and when it was finished 
it was a motley room. There were photographs of 
Legs everywhere ; all his papers were kept ; every- 
thing that had any connection with Legs and with 
youth was crammed into it. And when it was 
finished we found that we sat there together, 
instead of paying secret visits to the room, and we 
played at Noah’s ark, sitting on the carpet, and 
played at soldiers, clearing a low table which had 
226 


MARCH 


been Helen’s nursery-table (for you cannot play 
soldiers on the floor, since they stagger on a carpet) , 
and peas from pea-shooters sent whole rows of 
Grenadiers down like ninepins. But we could 
neither of us ride the rocking-horse, so instead we 
tilted him backwards and forwards, and pretended 
he was charging the foe. 

Of course, all reasonably-minded readers will say 
we were two absurd people. We both of us disagree 
altogether. For you have to judge of any proceed- 
ing by its effects, and the effect in this case was that 
Legs’ injunction that we should ‘ buck up ’ became 
a habit. That inimitable youth which Legs gave 
the home, he, his bodily presence, had gone. But 
somehow the atmosphere was recaptured. We 
played at youth, at childhood, till it became real 
again. For a household without youth in it is a 
dead household ; a puppy or a kitten may supply it, 
or an old man of eighty may supply it. But youth 
of some kind must be part of one’s environment. 
Else the world withers. 

Another thing has happened to me personally. I 
have said that at the beginning of the year I looked 
forward into the future through two transparencies, 
one sunlit, the other dark. But now the dark one 
(I can express it in no other way) had been with- 
drawn. Dear Legs’ death was not quite identical 
with it, for it was not withdrawn then. But during 
the month that followed it gradually melted away. 
I can trace just two causes for it. 

The first was this : In ineptitude of spirit I had 
reasoned to myself that the death of the body 
227 p 2 


A REAPING 


logically implied the merging of the life into the 
one central life. But after his death Legs became 
to my spirit more individual than ever. And the 
second cause was this establishment of the nursery. 
Though youth might have passed for oneself, it still 
lived. One was wrong, too (at least I was), in 
thinking it had passed from oneself. Else how did 
I feel so singularly annoyed when Helen shot down 
with a wet pea a whole regiment of my Life Guards ? 
I was annoyed ; I am still. It was a perfect fluke 
that the Colonel on horseback fell in such a way that 
he more than decimated his own regiment. And I 
am sure Helen shook the table, else why should the 
Brigadier-General, posted in the extreme rear, have 
fallen off the table altogether ? She won. 

Meantime in this first week of March the winds were 
roaring out of the south-west, and for a while, days 
together sometimes, squalls which the Valkyrie 
maidens might have bridled to make steeds for their 
swift going came in unbroken procession from the 
Atlantic. Helen is a lover of the sea, and these gales 
coming out of the waste of waters touch something 
within her as mysterious as the sixth sense of animals, 
who feel and are excited by things that the five-sensed 
mortal is unaware of. To-day, however, was quiet 
and calm, and we stormed the steep ascent of the 
downs till we stood on the highest point of the 
Beacon, which looks down on all other land towards 
the south-west, so that the river of wind that flows 
from the Atlantic comes here unbreathed and un- 
tamed by traverse of other country, and you get it 
fresh and salt as it was when it left the ocean. 

228 


MARCH 


In that interval of quiet weather there was 
nothing to be perceived by the ordinary sense, but 
she sniffed the air like a filly at grass. 

* Wind is coming/ she said, * the great wind from 
the sea. I don’t care whether your little barometer 
has gone up or not ; what does it know of the winds ? 
We shall be at home before it comes, but I will tell 
you then, as we sit close to the fire, what is happening 
in the big places.’ 

She was quite right ; though the silly barometer 
had gone up, we were but half through dinner when 
the wind, which had been no more than a breeze all 
afternoon, struck the house as suddenly as a blow. 
The wood-fire on the hearth gave a little puff of 
smoke into the room, and then, thinking better, 
suddenly sparkled as if with frost, as the passage of 
the air above the chimney drew it up . At that Helen’s 
eyes were alight. She ate no more, but sat with her 
elbows on the table, while I, who have not the sixth 
sense, went gravely through mutton and anchovies 
on toast and an orange. Then they brought in 
coffee, and she shook her head to that. Meantime 
that first warning of the wind had been justified ; a 
Niagara of air poured over us, screaming and 
hooting, and making a mad orchestra of sound. At 
times it ceased altogether — the long pause of the 
conductor — and then, before one heard the wind at 
all, a tattoo of the drums of rain sounded on the 
window-pane. Then, heralded by those drums, the 
whole mad orchestra burst into a great tutti of 
screaming, hooting, sobbing. So much I could 
hear, but Helen was of it somehow. Something 
229 


A REAPING 

secret and sensitive within her vibrated to the 
uproar. 

I have seen her in the grip of the wind, as she 
expresses it, perhaps half a dozen times, and it always 
makes me vaguely uneasy. It is no less than a 
possession, and yet I can think of no one whom I 
would have imagined less liable to such a thing. I 
can imagine her surrounded by the terrors of fire or 
shipwreck, or any catastrophe that overthrows the 
reason, and makes men mere panic-stricken maniacs, 
keeping absolutely calm, and infecting others by 
her self-possession. But now and then the wind 
takes possession of her, and she becomes like the 
Pythian prophetess. 

* Oh, to be alone with the sea and the gale to- 
night !’ she said. ‘ Jack, what splendid things are 
happening in the great empty places of the world ! 
This has been brewing out on the Atlantic for a 
couple of days by now, and there are thousands 
of miles of great white-headed waves rising and 
falling in the darkness, and calling to each other, 
and dancing together. Up above them, as in the 
gallery of the ball-room, is the great mad band of 
which we hear a little in our stuffy house, and it 
will play to them all night and all to-morrow, and 
the waves will dance without ceasing, growing 
bigger as they dance, like some nightmare. Oh, 
you can imagine nothing ! But I see so clearly 
Mr. and Mrs. Wave and all their family dancing, 
dancing, all young, though white-headed, and 
growing bigger as they dance. They are cannibals, 
too, and a big wave will eat up a little one, which 
230 


MARCH 


makes it bigger yet. The wind loves to see that. 
He gives a great blare of trumpets when he sees a 
cannibal wave. Oh, it must have happened this 
moment ! That scream meant, “Well done, wave ! 
That was a big one you swallowed !” 

* Sometimes they see a ship coming along, and 
they love playing with ships, because all proper 
ships like being out in the Atlantic ball-room, and 
the waves crowd towards it, seeing which can lift 
it highest. Whiz ! Can’t you hear the screw racing, 
as the wave that lifted the stern runs away from 
under it ? How the masts strike right and left across 
a thousand stars, for the sky is quite clear ! The 
winds have turned out the clouds as you turn out 
the chairs and tables from a room where you dance.’ 

We had gone up to Legs’ room after dinner, and 
as she talked she went quickly from place to place, 
now pausing for a moment to look at a photograph, 
now putting coal on the fire, or drawing aside the 
curtain to look into the night. 

* Oh, there is the eternal youth of the world,’ she 

said — ‘ the song of the winds and the dance of the 
waves. I think all the souls of the little babies that 
are born come to land in the blowing from the sea. 
It is by that that vitality burns higher, and the 
fruitfulness of the world is renewed. Millions of 
blossoms of life are rushing over the land to-night, 
ready to drop into lonely homes ’ 

‘ Ah, don’t, don’t,’ I said. ‘ Helen, come and sit 
down and be quiet.’ 

She paused for a moment opposite me, looking at 
me with her wonderful shining eyes. 

231 


A REAPING 


‘ Not I, not 1/ she said. 

She still paused, still looking at me, still waiting 
for me to join her, as it were. And in that pause a 
sudden faint far-away light broke on me. She had 
said words which must have awoke in her, even as 
they awoke in me, the most keen and poignant 
sorrow that can touch those who love each other, 
and yet she was still smiling, and her eyes shone. 

I got up. Something of that huge joy that trans- 
figured her was wrapping me round also. The thrill, 
the rapture in which she was enveloped, began to 
encompass us. 

‘ What do you mean ?’ I asked. 

‘ It is for you to tell me,’ she said. ‘ It must be 
done that way.’ 

* You said “ ready to drop into lonely homes/' ' 
I said. 

4 “ So that they are filled with laughter,” ' said 
she. 

Then I knew. 

y It is here,' I said — * the nursery.' 

And at that the excitement, the exultation slowly 
passed from the face of my beloved, for there was 
no room there for more than motherhood. Though 
the wind still bugled and trumpeted outside, she 
heard it no more ; the wildness of the dancing waves, 
grey-headed, growing waves, passed by outside her. 

. . . The blossom ready to drop filled her heart with 
the tenderness of the infinite deep love of the mother 
that shall be. 

She sat there on the floor at my feet, with her 
arms round my knees and her head pillowed there. 

232 


MARCH 


' I have got to confess, too/ she said, ‘ though I 
am not ashamed of my confession. But don’t allow 
yourself to be hurt, Jack. Just hold on for a minute 
without being hurt, and you will find that you are 
not. Now I shall hide my face, and speak to you 
like that. I have known it quite a long time : 
before Legs died I knew it.’ 

Well, I had to hold on for a minute or two, and 
not be hurt. If you think it over, you will agree it 
was rather a hard task that I had been set. On the 
other hand, about big things, about things that 
really matter, you must take my word for it that 
Helen is never wrong. But I had not been for- 
bidden to ask a question. 

‘ Then why did you not tell me ?’ I said. 

Her head with the sunlit billows just stirred a 
moment, but she did not look up, but spoke with a 
hidden face. 

‘ Because through all these weeks, my darling, 
you have been struggling against some bitterness 
of soul. You have made light of it to me, but 
I had to be quite sure it had gone from you 
before I told you this. I know what it was — it 
was the doubts you talked about to me when we 
sat one night at the edge of dear Legs’ grave — when 
it was dug, but empty. And I had to be quite sure 
it had all passed from you before I told you this. 
I have not been sure till now, and — and I wanted 
you so much to guess. You nearly guessed, I felt, 
when we arranged this heavenly nursery.’ 

Then again there was silence, and I think I never 
knew till then how desperately difficult it is to be 
233 


A REAPING 


honest with oneself. It is so much easier to be 
honest with other people. At the first glance I told 
myself I had got over the bitterness and blindness 
of which she had spoken when we talked together 
over Legs’ grave, but gradually I became aware that 
I had not. Somewhere deep down, so that while 
the days passed it concealed itself from me, that 
bitterness had still been there. In this book, which 
has tried to be honest, you will, I dare say, find no 
trace of it since that night, but I had not probed 
deep enough. It had been there, and I think the 
days when we arranged the nursery finally expelled 
it. To-night, at least, I believed it was gone, and 
since Helen believed so, too, perhaps we are right 
about it. She, the witch, the diviner, had known 
me so much better than I had known myself all 
along. 

All this took time, for the processes of honesty 
with me are slow. But there is no difficulty about 
the matter, perhaps, if the head you love best 
in all the world is pillowed on your knee. That 
is a stimulant, one must imagine. So at last I 
said : 

* Yes, it’s done.’ 

She came closer yet, and, like Mr. Holmes, we 
talked below our breath, in whispers, as if afraid of 
disturbing this great joy that had come floating 
down on us, borne on the sea-spray, borne on the 
wind-tide, borne as you will, so that only it came 
here. 

Then, very soon after, she went to bed, and I was 
left sitting in the nursery, with its new significance. 
234 


MARCH 


Yet it was not quite new. I had, as Helen said, 

4 half guessed before/, and I but wondered, now I 
knew, how my imagination had halted half-way, and 
had not clearly seen the star on which Helen's eyes 
were fixed. Yet who would have known ? She had 
been so full of art in her wording ; even that master- 
word she had used, ‘ nursery/ seemed but to have 
slipped in, and I had thought she meant only — as, 
indeed, she had said — that it was to be the room of 
young things, where she should sit when the shadow 
of childlessness was chill, and with the aid of the 
memories of youth and play keep the mists of middle 
age from closing round us, and the frosts of old age 
from settling too stiffly on the later years of our 
travel. The room was to be but a palliative or a 
tonic, as you will, a consolation for the things that 
were not to be for us, and now it showed another 
face. It was not the past of which it spoke, but 
the future. 

I suppose I sat long over the embers of the fire, 
but these were hours that had escaped from the 
hand of Time, and were not to be computed by his 
scale. Sometimes I threw a log into the open hearth 
of the fireplace (ah, but that open hearth must be 
altered now ; it would never do in the nursery), and 
sometimes I plied an industrious pair of bellows, 
but for the most part I sat idle, looking into the 
fiery heart of the blaze ; for the news that Helen 
had made me guess was at first unrealizable. Though 
I knew it to be true, I had to absorb, digest it, since 
a great joy is as stunning a thing as the stroke of 
235 


A REAPING 


sorrow. And gradually, as gradually as the work- 
ings of the process of beauty, I began to feel, and 
not only to know, the name of the room where I sat. 
It was the nursery. 

But Helen was wrong about one thing. She had 
said that the wind would play to the dancing of the 
waves all night and all next day, but before I went 
to bed that wild orchestra of the storm had ceased. 
Its work was done for us. It had blown the bud 
of the blossom of life into the house that so longed 
for it. 

It is strange how quickly the events of life become 
part of one. Next morning I woke in full posses- 
sion of the new knowledge. There was no question 
or uncertainty as to what that was which made a 
rapture of waking. And with the same suddenness 
all real knowledge of what life had been before I 
knew this had passed from me. I could no longer 
in the least realize what I had felt like before the 
moment came when Helen had made me guess. 
Though that moment was so few hours away, yet I 
could no more conceive existence without it than 
one can form any mental picture of what life would 
be without the gift of sight or hearing. It is not 
that any huge event destroys all that went before 
it, but it so stains back through the turned pages 
of the past that they are all coloured and suffused 
with it. 

How the blackbirds and thrushes sang on that 
March morning ! I had awoke before dawn to hear 
236 


MARCH 


the early tuning-up going on in the bushes, and 
before long, since I was too happy to sleep, I got 
up, dressed quietly, and went out. The tuning-up 
was just over, and the birds were all busy with 
breakfast, for you must know, as soon as they wake, 
they get in singing-trim for the day before they have 
their food. That done, they go on their bright-eyed 
quest, listening, with head cocked as they scuttle 
over the lawn, for the sound of a worm moving. 
They are so close to the ground themselves that 
they can localize this to within a fraction of an 
inch, and then in goes the spear-like beak, and the 
poor thing is dragged out of the soft, dew-drenched 
earth. They are not quite tidy eaters, these dear 
minstrels of the garden, for the point is to get your 
breakfast inside you, beyond recall, with the least 
possible delay. Swallow, gulp, swallow, and the 
thing is done. Then you give one long flute-like 
note of satisfaction, and listen again for the second 
course. But one cannot exactly say that they have 
bad manners at table, for the extreme sensibleness 
of the plan excludes all other considerations. Also, 
bad manners at table irresistibly suggest greediness, 
and no bird is ever greedy. They have excellent 
appetites, and when they have had enough they 
stop eating, and instantly begin to sing. 

It was just at the end of birds’ breakfast that 
I got out — that is to say, it still wanted some 
minutes to sunrise. The lawn was all gossamer- 
webbed and shimmering with dew, as if some thin 
layer of moonstone or transparent pearl had been 
veneered over emerald, and I felt it almost a van- 
237 


A REAPING 


dalism to walk over it, removing with my clumsy 
feet whole patches of thin inimitable jewellery. 
The three-hour gale of the night before had vanished 
to give place to a morning of halcyon calm, and I 
augured one of those rare and exquisite days which 
March sometimes gives us — days of warm windless- 
ness and the promise of spring. Straight in front of 
me rose the Beacon, still submerged in clear dark 
shadow, but high in the heavens above dawn had 
come, for it made a golden fleece — one such as never 
Jason handled — of the little cirrhus clouds that the 
gale had forgotten to sweep away. Dawn would 
soon strike the Beacon, too, but before that I hoped 
to stand on its top, and see the huge embrace of day 
and night, the melting and absorption of darkness 
into light. Even the river, with its waving water- 
weeds and aqueous crystal, did not detain me, and 
I gave but ten minutes to the ascent, for I wanted 
to welcome the dawn from a high place, to stand on 
the roof of the hills to greet it. 

Slowly dawn descended from the sky, quivering 
and palpitating with light. The great golden flood 
came nearer and nearer the earth, which as yet 
caught but the reflection from the radiant heavens. 
It hung a moment hovering, the bright-winged iri- 
descent bird of dawn, just above my head, and then 
the sun leaped up, vaulting above the eastern hills. 
The level shafts of light swept across the land, a 
mantle of gold, while in the valleys below the clear 
dusk still lay like tideless waters. But down the 
hill-sides strode the day, throwing its bright arms 
about the night, enfolding and encompassing it in 
238 


MARCH 


miraculous embrace, and I looked to where home 
was. Already the big elms in the garden were 
pillars of flame, then the roof burned, and suddenly 
the windows blazed signal-like. Dawn had come. 

That was not half the miracle. Light had awoke, 
the hills were gilded with the sun, but at the touch 
of the gilding larks innumerable sprang from the 
warm tussocks of down-grass and aspired. A 
hundred singing specks rose against the sky, each 
infinitesimal, so that they seemed but like the little 
motes that swim across the eyeball, but these were 
living things with open throat that hailed the sun- 
rise. Perpendicularly they rose, wings quivering, 
and throat a-tremble with song, till the eye lost 
them against the dazzling azure of day, and only 
enraptured voices from the air made the heavens 
musical, as if the morning stars sang together. 
Heaven made holiday. Its company of sweet singers 
and the gold of sunrise were one thing — the dawn. 

Dear God, dear God, how I thank You for that 
indestructible minute ! I knew now what the sunlit 
curtain that lay between the future and me was, 
and the very morning after I had known You let me 
see from this high place the birth of day. In this 
physical world there was reproduced that golden 
sunlit curtain. You made visible to me what my 
heart knew. And to me on the top of the Beacon 
the windows of my home flashed a beacon to me. 
And all was of Your making — the sun and the 
mounting skylarks, and down below the trees of 
the garden, and the beaconing, flushing window of 
my beloved, and the fruit of the womb. When I 
239 


A REAPING 


come to die, I want to remember all that. Truth 
and Life were there, and the Way also. And what 
is the sum of those three things ? 

Yet was I content even then ? Good heavens, 
no ! There were many beautiful things yet to be, 
and the glory of His gifts just lies in this — that 
there is always something better to come. This 
great bran-pie of the earth never gives to our little 
groping hands its best present. There is always 
something more. Your heart’s desire is given you, 
but at the moment of giving your heart is enlarged, 
and you ask for something better yet. And if you 
want it enough, you get it. The only difficulty is 
to want enough. For you are not given, so I take 
it, things that you have not really desired. All 
sorts of bonuses come in, pleasant surprises, but the 
solid dividend is for the man who wills. There are 
fluctuations, of course, but to look upwards, with- 
out doubt, is a gilt-edged affair. I correct that. 
The edge is gilt, and so is the rest of it, and the gilt 
is laid over gold. 

It was thus that I looked from the top of the 
Beacon, with the mist of the song of the invisible 
skylarks all round, and the blazing reflection of the 
windows of our room in the valley ; and there among 
the skylarks it seemed that Legs joined me. It was 
of no use to deny he was there, simply because it 
was silly to deny it. There is a French word — 
revenant — to express his presence, but even the 
solidity of that word failed to do justice. He had 
240 


MARCH 


never gone away, and so he could never have come 
back. He was with us all the time, and rejoiced in 
the arrangement of the nursery, even as he had been 
so hopelessly amused at the correctness of Mr. 
Holmes on the morning of his funeral. 

And at the moment of this I expected the ‘ open 
vision.’ Life, and death, and birth, the three great 
facts, were so near realization. Again I expected 
to see Pan peep over the brow of the Beacon, and 
to hear a flute-like song that was not of skylarks. 
I was ready — dear God, I was ready. 

So I thought for the moment, but before the next 
had beaten I knew I was not. I wanted more — 
more of this divine world, more of what the next 
few months will bring. Should all be well when 
summer comes, I think I would choose to die now. 
And the moment I thought that I knew its unreality. 
I want to live through the beautiful years that will 
come. I want to have a son at Eton or a daughter 
who turns the heads of eligible youths. I want 
both, and more than both. Die ! Who talked of 
that ? I want to have a full nursery. I want to 
see Helen old and grey-headed, with grandchildren 
round her, and herself the youngest of them all. I 
want to live through the whole of this beautiful life 
till old age ; and though that is called the winter of 
life, there is no need that it should be so. The last 
day of a man of eighty should be the most luxuriant 
of autumn, before the touch of winter has blackened 
the flowers ; for it is only the thought of death that 
makes us think of old age and winter together, and 
the thought that does that conceives falsely of death. 

241 Q 


A REAPING 


So, anyhow, it seemed to me on this midsummer 
morning of March. I knew that all that was was 
kind. Pan smiled without cruelty, and if he smiled 
from the Cross, it was from the throne of ineffable 
light that he smiled also. 

One by one the skylarks, sated with song, dropped 
down again to the sunlit down. Dawn had passed, 
and day had come, and — oh, bathos of bathos ! — I 
was so hungry. If I had given but ten minutes to 
the ascent, I made but five of the reversed journey, 
and designed an early breakfast to make existence 
possible till Helen came down ; for it was yet not 
long after seven, and a Sahara of starvation lay 
between me and bacon. Yet, though I have said 
that this was bathos, I do not know that I really 
think so, since in this delightful muddle of life 
everything is so inextricably intertwined that bathos 
of some kind invariably is the sequel of all high 
adventure. The great scene is played, the sublime 
thing said, and then you have tea or take a ticket 
for somewhere. So I confess only to literary bathos, 
and to disarm the critic I may state that these 
quiet chronicles are not supposed to be literary 
at all, but merely the plain account of quiet things 
as they happened. 

So I lingered for a moment after the knee-shaking 
descent was over to talk for a little, but not for 
long, with the river. There was a great trout just 
below the bridge, and I am sure he knew it was still 
March, for he wagged his impudent head at me, 
saying : ‘I am perfectly safe. I shall eat steadily 
till April, and then observe your silly flies with a 
242 


MARCH 


contemptuous eye.' And though he was a three- 
pounder at least, I bore him no grudge. I don’t 
think I wanted to kill anything that morning. 

Then I crossed the further field, and came down 
into the rose-garden, still meditating on the im- 
mediate assuagement of hunger. But then I saw 
who stood there, and I meditated on this no more ; 
for she was there. 

‘ I got up early,’ she said, ' and found you had 
already gone. Oh, good-morning ! I forgot.’ 

‘ I shall never forget the goodness of this morn- 
ing,’ said I. 

Then I saw that her eyes were brimming. 

' Ought I to have told you before ?’ she said. 
' Forgive me if I ought.’ 

In that first hour of day we came closer to each 
other than ever before. My beloved was mine, and 
the time of the singing-birds had come. 


9 2 


243 




APRIL 


245 


APRIL 


I must remind the indulgent reader, lest Helen and 
I should appear tediously opulent, that our Swiss 
trip in the winter was due to a windfall of a hundred 
pounds — a thing which may conceivably happen to 
anybody, and in this instance happened to us. 
Consequently, the fact that we went abroad again 
in April does not, if it is considered fairly, argue 
aggressive riches. In any case, I refuse to stoop to 
degrading justifications. We did not go because it 
was good for our healths, which were both excellent, 
nor because foreign travel improves and expands the 
mind. As a matter of fact, I do not believe it 
does, for the majority of travellers are always com- 
paring the foreign scenes they visit with spots 
in their native land, vastly to the advantage of 
the latter, and the farther and more frequently 
they go, the more deep-rooted becomes their 
insularity. We went merely because we enjoyed it, 
and had formed a careful plan of retrenchment 
afterwards, being about to let the Sloane Street 
house for the three summer months. That was 
rather a severe decision to come to, since we both 
hate the idea of strangers using ‘ our things ’ and 
sleeping in our beds; but by these means this 
247 


A REAPING 


expedition to Greece became possible, and when 
once it was possible it had already become 
necessary. 

So here we sat this morning on the steps of the 
little temple of Wingless Victory, wingless, as the 
old sunlit myth said, because, when the nymph 
lighted on the sacred rock of the Acropolis, she 
stripped off her wings, which were henceforward 
useless to her, since she would abide here for ever, 
just below the great house of defence that the 
Athenians had raised to the Wisdom of God, Athene, 
who was born full-grown and in panoply of shield, 
and helmet, and spear, from the head of Zeus. Out 
of his head she sprang, in painless birth, with a cry 
that was heard by Echo on Hymettus, and rang 
back in Echo’s voice across the plain, the shout of 
the wisdom of God incarnate. 

And then Poseidon, the lord of the sea, who 
coveted these fair Attic plains, challenged Athene 
for the ownership thereof. Each must produce a 
sign of godhead, and the most excellent should win 
for its manifestor all the plain of Attica. There, 
high on the rock, where the great birth had taken 
place, were the lists set, and with his trident Posei- 
don struck the mountain-top, and from the dent 
there flowed a stream of the salt sea, which was his 
kingdom ; and then the grey-eyed goddess of wisdom 
laid aside her spear, and from the waving of her 
white hands there sprang an olive-tree, the sign of 
peace and of plenty. So Poseidon went down to his 
realm again, where no man may gather the harvest ; 

248 


APRIL 

for none could question which was the more excellent 
sign. 

It was after this, after the Athenians had raised 
the great house to the Wisdom of God, that Wing- 
less Victory came to abide here. It was not fit, for 
all her greatness, to build her a house on the ground 
that had been given to Athene, so just outside the 
gates they made this platform of stone, and raised 
on it the shrine that looks towards Salamis. 

Fables, so beautiful that they needed no further 
evidence of their truth, sprang from ancient Greece, 
as flowers from a fruitful field. Whether they were 
true or not, whether that peerless woman’s form 
that stands now in stone in the Louvre, alighting 
with rush of windy draperies on the ship’s prow, 
ever was seen here by mortal eye, or whether the 
myth but grew from the brain of this wonderful 
people, matters not at all. Beauty, according to 
their creed, was one with truth, just as ugliness was 
falsehood. They denied ugliness : they would have 
none of it, and it was from the practice of that con- 
viction that there rose the flawless city of art. 
Never, so we must believe, during that wonderful 
century and a half, when from the ground, maybe, 
of the lifeless hieratic Egyptian art there shot up 
that transcendent flower of loveliness, of which even 
the fragments that remain to us now, battered and 
disfigured as they are, are in another zone of beauty 
compared to all that went before or has come after- 
wards, was anything ugly produced at all, except as 
deliberate caricature. It was no Renaissance — it 
was Naissance itself — the birth of the beautiful. 

249 


A REAPING 


On every side shot out the rays of the miraculous , 
many-coloured star : from the marble of Pentelicus 
flowed that torrent of statues which make all others : 
look coarse and unlovely, for the speed of the Greek 
eye was such that they saw attitudes which pass 
before we of slower vision have perceived them. 
Sometimes they saw things that were in themselves 
ungraceful, but how Pheidias must have laughed j 
with glee when, among the seventy horses of the I 
great procession on the frieze, he put in one that, 
cantering, stood upon one leg, while the other three 
were bunched underneath it. Taken by itself, it is a 
grotesque ; taken with the others, it gives to the 
jubilant procession of youths and horses the one 
perfect touch. More than two thousand years ago 
a Greek saw that ; two thousand years later we with 
our focal planes in photography can say he was 
right. 

In all arts the Greeks were right : they cut through 
the onyx of the sardonyx, leaving the lucent 
image in the sard ; in the less eternal clay they 
made the statuettes of Tanagra — those sketches of 
attitudes so natural and momentary that, looking, 
we can scarcely believe that they do not move : 
where a woman has already made up her mind to 
take a step forward, but has just not taken it ; 
where she is in act of throwing the knuckle-bones, 
but has yet not thrown them ; where a boy has 
determined to push back his chiton (for the day is 
hot), but has just not made the movement. You 
cannot hope to understand the Greek genius, unless 
you realize that our eyes are snails as compared with 
250 


APRIL 


theirs. They saw with the naked eye what our 
instantaneous photograph now tells us is the case. 

And of their paintings ! We have none left (and 
there’s the pity of it) which even reflect the Greek 
master at his best. But corresponding to our 
English paintings on china, we have the Greek vases 
of the fourth and fifth centuries. They were made 
by journeymen in potters’ shops, but there is not 
one that lacks the supremacy of knowledge and 
observation. It is as if a china-shop in the Seven 
Dials suddenly displayed in its window examples 
of the nude figure which showed a perfect know- 
ledge not only of anatomy, but of the romance of 
movement. The sculptors and painters of Greece 
saw perfectly. Even our academicians themselves 
appear to us to be not flawless. But in Greece we 
are not dealing with these great lords of colour and 
drawing : we deal only, as far as drawing goes, with 
little people in back streets. The noble church of 
St. Paul in the City of London, which so few people 
visit, was lately decorated. At this moment I look 
on a sketch of a fragment of pottery. ... It is by 
one like whom there were thousands. It happens 
to be perfect in draughtsmanship. 

To think of one day in ancient Athens ! In the 
morning I went up (I feel as if I must have done 
this) to see the new statue of Athene Promachos, 
which Pheidias had just finished. We knew little 
then about his work, except that he had been 
chosen to decorate the Parthenon, and those who 
had seen his sketches for the frieze (which we can 
see now in the British Museum) said that they 
2 51 


A REAPING 


were ‘ not bad/ So after breakfast my friend and 
I strolled towards the Acropolis, talking, as Athe- 
nians talked, of ‘ some new thing ’ — in fact, we 
talked of several new things, and, being Athenians, 
we got quite hot about them, since we had (being 
Athenians) that keenness of soul that never says 
‘ I don’t care about that/ or ‘ I take no interest in 
this/ Everything was intensely interesting. It 
was a hot morning and the plane-trees by the 
Ilyssus looked attractive, and there was a company 
of people there whose talk might be stimulating, 
but to-day we were too busy : we had to see the 
Athene Promachos, a bronze statue by Pheidias, 
forty feet high, and after lunch (lunch was going to 
be rather grand, because a new play was coming 
out, and Pericles was going to be there, and perhaps 
Aspasia) we were going to /Eschylus’s new tragedy, 
called the ‘ Agamemnon/ And my friend, who was 
Alcibiades, was giving a supper-party in the evening. 
Socrates was coming, and a man who was really 
very pleasant, only he listened and made notes, 
but seldom talked. His name was Plato. 

Alcibiades was rather profane sometimes, and 
spoke of the great gods as if he did not really believe 
in them. I, knowing him so well, knew that he did, 
and that it was only his Puck-like spirit which 
made him in talk make light of what he believed. 
All up the steps of the Propylaea he was, though 
amusing, rather profane, and then we came through 
the central gate, which was yet unfinished, and 
straight in front of us was the statue. And some 
jest — I know not what — died on my friend’s lips, 
252 


APRIL 


and his great grey eyes suddenly became dim with 
tears at the sight of beauty, and his mouth quivered 
as he said : 

' Mighty Lady Athene, my goddess !' 

And with that he knelt down on the rock in front 
of where she stood, and prayed to the wisdom of 
God. 

He refused to go to the grand lunch after this, and 
insisted on our remaining up here till it was time to 
get to the theatre, quoting something that Socrates 
had said about the cleansing power of beauty ; ‘ so 
we will not soil ourselves just yet/ quoth he, * with 
the intrigues we should hear about at lunch, but go 
straight from here to the theatre/ So we bought 
from a peasant some cheese wrapped up in a vine- 
leaf, and a bottle of wine, and a loaf of bread and 
some grapes, and then went down the rock to the 
theatre. And still that divine vision had possession 
of Alcibiades, for he paid no attention to the greet- 
ings of his friends, and bade them be silent. And 
soon the actors were come, and the watchman went 
up to the tower, and looked east, and saw the 
beacons leap across the land, to show that the ten- 
year siege was over, and that Troy had fallen. Then 
slowly began to be unfolded the tale of the stupendous 
tragedy. Home came Agamemnon, with his cap- 
tive, the Princess Cassandra, riding behind him in 
his chariot of triumph. Clytemnestra, his wife, met 
him at the palace door, and with feigned obeisance 
and lying words of love welcomed him in, leaving 
Cassandra outside. Then there descended on the 
Princess the spirit of prophecy, and in wild words 

253 


A REAPING 


she shrieked out the doom that was coming. Quickly 
it came : from within we heard the death-cry of the 
King, and the palace doors swung open, and out 
came the Queen, fondling the axe with which she 
had slain him. . . . The doom of the gods was 
accomplished. 

Then afterwards we went round to the green- 
room, and found Aschylus there, and Alcibiades, in 
his impulsive way — I tell him he has the feelings of 
a woman — must kneel and kiss the hand that wrote 
this wonderful play. Socrates was there, too, 
putting absurd questions to everybody about the 
difference between the muse of tragedy and the 
muse of comedy, as if anybody cared, so long as 
Aeschylus wrote plays like that ! However, he got 
Plato to listen to him, and soon made him contra- 
dict himself, which is what Socrates chiefly cares 
about. Pericles came in, too, with Aspasia, to 
whom he kindly introduced me. Certainly she is 
extraordinarily beautiful, and has great wit. But 
she called attention to her physical charms too 
much, which is silly, since they are quite capable 
of calling attention to themselves. 

Afterwards, since only Alcibiades and I had seen 
the wonderful statue, we all strolled up to the 
Acropolis again to look at it and the sunset. Socrates 
came, too, and after we had examined and admired 
the bronze goddess again, we went and sat on the 
steps of the temple of Athene. He tried his usual 
game of asking us questions till we contradicted 
ourselves, but before long all of us refused to answer 
him any more, saying that we were aware that we 
254 


APRIL 


were totally ignorant of everything, and that there 
was no longer any need for him to prove it to us. 
And then — exactly how it arose I don’t know, but 
I think it was from the questions and answers that 
had already passed — he began to weave us the most 
wonderful fable, showing us how all that we thought 
beautiful here on earth was but the reflection, the 
pale copy, of the beauty which was eternal. Round 
the outer rim of the earth and the stars, he said, 
ran the living stream of a great river, which, indeed, 
was heaven, and everything that we thought beauti- 
ful here had its archetype there, and all day and 
all night the gods drove round and round on this 
river of beauty in their chariots. It was our 
business, then, here on earth, to look for beauty 
everywhere, and never falter in the quest of it, for 
so we prepared ourselves for the sight of that of 
which these things were but the shadow, so that the 
greater would be the initiation which would be ours 
after death. More especially we must seek for the 
beauty of spiritual things, which was the real beauty, 
and so order our bodies, our words, and actions, 
that they were all in tune with it, with the beauty 
of prudence, and temperance, and kindness, and 
wisdom, for it was of these that heaven itself and the 
living stream was composed, and these shone from 
the eyes of the immortal gods. 

‘ So there is my prayer/ said he, rising and 
stretching out his hands to the great statue, while 
we all rose with him. ‘ 0 Athene, give me inward 
beauty of soul, and let the inward and the outward 
man be at one/ 


255 


A REAPING 


So the sun set, but on the violet crown of Athens 
— the hills there, Hymettus, Pentelicus, and Parnes 
— the light still lingered, and shone like the river 
of beauty Socrates had told us about, till it faded 
also from the tops, and above the deep night was 
starry-kirtled. 

***** 

Helen is the most delightful person in the world 
to tell stories to. However lamely you tell them, 
she is absorbed in them, and never asks about the 
weak points, as other children do. She might, for 
instance, have asked if I was correct about my 
dates ; did the ‘ Agamemnon ’ come out in the year 
that the ‘ Promachos ’ was made ? Instead 

‘ And who was I ?’ she asked. 4 Don’t tell me I 
was Aspasia, because I don’t like what you told me 
about her.’ 

‘ No ; you were not Aspasia,’ I said rather 
hurriedly ; * and I rather think you had had your 
turn in Greece at some other time. I didn’t know 
you then, except, perhaps, in the myths, for I am 
not sure that you were not Electra.’ 

* Was she nice ?’ asked Helen. 

* She was very nice to Orestes.’ 

‘Oh, don’t! Who was Orestes? What a nice 
name !’ 

‘ You were his sister. That’s all about myth- 
ology just now.’ 

The plain quivered under the sunlit haze of blue. 
To the south the dim sea was in tone like two skies 
256 


APRIL 


poured together, and the isles of Greece floated in 
it like swimmers asleep. Below, to the left, lay 
the theatre where I had seen the ‘ Agamemnon/ 
empty, but ready as if the play was just going to 
begin. Who knew what ghosts of those supreme 
actors were there, what audience of the bright-eyed 
Greeks followed the drama ? And above us stood 
the presiding genius of Athens, the beautiful house 
built for the virgin who sprang from the brain of 
God. A little more, and it would be her birthday 
again, and we should hear the sound of horse- 
hoofs coming up the hill, and see the procession 
of the Athenian youths, and the men with the bulls 
for sacrifice, and the wine-carriers, and the incense- 
bearer, and the priests of the great goddess. Another 
company would be there, too — the hierarchy of 
Olympus — come down on Athene's birthday to 
visit her in her beautiful home. With Zeus would 
be the mother of the gods ; and Aphrodite would 
be there, the spirit of love that renews the earth ; 
and Apollo, who makes it bright with sunshine ; 
and Demeter, the mother of the cornfields ; and 
Persephone, radiant, and returned from the gate 
of death ; and Hermes, the swift messenger whose 
feet were winged ; and Iris, who was rainbow, the 
sign of the beneficent seasons. 

And . . . though we saw them not, there was not 
one missing. Love was here, and below were the 
ripening cornfields, on which the sun shone ; and 
beyond was the realm of Poseidon, and a squall of 
spring rain, that passed like a curtain in front of 
Hymettus, showed us Iris. 

2 57 R 


A REAPING 


Then it was time to go down townwards again, for 
the morning was passed ; but Helen paused at the 
doorway at the gate of the Acropolis, and looked 
towards the temple. 

* Best of all, I like Socrates’ prayer,’ she said ; 

‘ and I must say it to myself.’ 

Spring had been rather late this year, and a week 
ago, when we drove out to the foot of Pentelicus, 
to have a country ramble, the rubbish of last year’s 
autumn was still in evidence. Then the spring 
began to stir, and two days ago, when we had gone 
out again, all the anemones except one kind were in 
full flower. They are heralds, those mauve and 
violet and pink and white chalices of blossom, to 
tell us that the great procession of Primavera has 
begun. But last of all come the trumpeters, the 
scarlet anemones, and if the sun has been warm, 
and no north wind has delayed the procession, they 
blow their blasts over the land just two days after 
the heralds have appeared. So to-day after lunch 
we went out to hear the trumpeters ; to-morrow we 
shall see Primavera herself. 

Spring herself, the goddess Primavera, was very 
near to-day, for on thicket and brake and over the 
flank of the hill-side her trumpeters were blowing 
their shrill blasts of scarlet. Two days before the 
land was sober-coloured ; now, wherever you looked, 
the wonderful anemone, last to flower, stood high 
with full-blown petals. The movement and stir 
of the new life was hurrying to its climax. To- 
morrow, instead of the myriad buds of the cistus 
258 


APRIL 


and the pale stalks of orchid, the flowers would be 
unfurled at the final touch of the spring, at the 
advent of the goddess herself. To-day a myriad 
folded bells hung from the great bushes of southern 
heath, like stars still cloaked in mist ; to-morrow, 
with one night more of warm wind and a morning 
of sun, they would blaze and peal together ; for 
it is thus in this wonderful Southern land that spring 
comes : a few heralds go before, and then the army 
of trumpeters. After this, She crosses the plain 
with the ardour of hot blood, so that all flowers 
blossom together, and every bud and beast goes 
suddenly a-mating. Here there is none of our 
limitative February, our pinched hopes of March ; 
all is quiet till the heralding of the anemones and 
the trumpets of their scarlet brethren. Then, in 
full panoply of blossom, Primavera and summer, 
too, are there together. For a week or two the 
land is a-flame with flower, and then already the 
maturing of fruit-tree has begun. 

Northerners though we are, both Helen and I 
claimed some strain of Southern blood in the 
ecstasy of those days. That for which we wait and 
watch for patient weeks in the shy approach of 
spring in England was here done with a flame and 
a shout. There was no hesitancy or delay ; no weak 
snowdrop said that winter was coming to an end 
weeks before spring came, to die before the crocuses 
endorsed its message. Here all was asleep together 
till all woke together. Ten days ago there was no 
hint of spring save in the strong sunshine : the 
wilderness of winter still spread its icy hands. Then 
259 r 2 


A REAPING 


faster than the melting of the snow on the top of 
Parnes came the heralds in the wilderness, and 
spring was there. It was like the winter of Kundry’s 
soul, to whom one morning Gurnemanz said : ‘ Auf ! 
Der Winter floh, und Lenz ist da.’ And on that 
day came Parsifal and her redemption, and the 
ransomed of the Lord returned with joy and ; 
singing. 

I have no skill to tell of those days : for the past, 
all that I knew of the history of this wonderful 
land, and the present, all that love meant, and the 
future, the dear event that was coming closer, 
were so inextricably mingled that no coherence is 
possible. But if you love a place, and are there 
with your beloved, and know that she will bear a 
child to you before many weeks are over, you may 
make a paradise of Clapham Junction, and find the 
joy of it a thing incommunicable. And how much 
more difficult a material is the magic of this land 
to work in — this little Attic plain, peopled with the 
ghosts of that wonderful age, which are not dead 
at all, but instinct with life to-day, at this moment 
when spring has come, so forcibly that even the slow 
tortoises on the side of Pentelicus hurried breath- 
lessly about, with deep sighs (I assure you) till 
they found a congenial lady. Then they ran — 
positively ran — round her in ever-narrowing circles, 
still sighing. There were grasshoppers, too — green 
gentlemen and brown ladies. The brown ladies 
genteelly ran away, but they never ran far. The 1 
great hawks sought each other in the sublime sky, 
and the young men and maidens of Athens as we 
260 


APRIL 


drove back were taking discreet walks together into 
the country. And from the Acropolis the maiden 
goddess, who is the Wisdom of God, looked down, 
and was well pleased. 

For, thank Heaven ! the Wisdom of God is no 
prude. To all has it given a soul, and to all souls 
is desire of some sort given — to one the perfection 
of form, to another the perfection of wit, to another 
the perfection of colour, to another the perfection 
of truth. For each there is a way ; each has got to 
follow it ; and for many there are various ways, and 
these many must follow them all. If a thing is 
lovely and of good report, we all have to hunt it 
home. It is no excuse to say you have no time, for 
you have all the time there is. Search, search : 
there is the Way everywhere. 

Indeed, this is no mystical affair : it is the plainest 
sense. Whatever happens, God is somehow re- 
vealed. But, being blind, we cannot always see the 
revelation. 

***** 

To-night, as Helen and I sit on deck of the 
steamer that takes us back again to Marseilles, we 
wonder what gives Greece its inalienable magic. 
We saw the fading of its shores in the dusk, and 
though the phosphorescence of the sea was a thing 
to marvel at, it was no longer the phosphorescence 
of Greek waters. That little fig-leaf-fingered land 
has sentiment somehow in its soil ; it cannot fail to 
move anybody. Its history since the Great Age — 
it is no use to deny it— has been tawdry beyond de- 
261 


A REAPING 


scription. It yielded to the Romans, it scarcely 
resisted the Albanians ; and though some flickering 
spirit of its old grandeur flamed again when its 
people rose against the Turkish rule in the early 
part of last century, what are we to say of the spirit 
of the people when, twelve years ago, they again 
fought their ancient and ancestral enemy ? The 
Turks strolled slowly southwards from the North of 
Thessaly, and only the intervention of the Powers 
prevented Greece again becoming a Turkish pro- 
vince. The Hellenic battle-cry went shrilly up to 
Heaven, but the Hellenic army trotted like a flock 
of sheep before the foe, until the Powers said that 
the war must cease. Only the year before there 
had been revival of the Olympic games, and there 
had been a race from Marathon to Athens in 
memory of Pheidippides, who bore the news of that 
stupendous victory, and died as he reached Athens, 
saying, ‘ Greece has conquered the Persians.' A 
Greek won that peaceful race from Marathon ; the 
same Greek won the peaceful race home, and 
arrived back in Attica in the very van and fore- 
front of the retreating army. The * host of hares ' 
was the Turkish name for the foes they never had 
occasion to meet, who started from their fortresses 
like hares from their forms, and galloped quietly 
away. Meantime the Greek fleet cruised in the 
Adriatic, and sank a fishing-boat. When the war 
was over, they came home with the spoils of their 
victory — a hat, a fish, a net. Perhaps it is best to 
say that there was no war at all : the Turkish armies 
made peaceful manoeuvres over Thessaly, until they 
262 


APRIL 


came to Volo. Then the Powers of Europe said : 

‘ We think your manoeuvres have extended far 
enough : kindly go home.’ 

Yet, somehow, the tragic futility of all this does 
not really touch Greece or the sentiment that the 
lovers of the lovely land feel for it. Supposing 
a Greek army, or a regiment of it, had met the 
Turk, and died in the cause of patriotism, that 
could not have added to the compelling charm 
of Greece, and so the fact that none of these patri- 
otic events happened does not diminish it. In 
Greece, whatever may be done or left undone, you 
are in the country where once beauty shot up like 
the aloe-flower, so that all else is inconsiderable 
beside that, since whatever the world has achieved 
afterwards, whether in painting, or sculpture, or 
drama, or poetry, or in that eagerness of life which 
is the true romance of existence, is measured, if 
only it be fine enough, by the standard set then. 
That is the haunting, imperishable charm of this 
country, and, missing that, even the phosphores- 
cence of waters by night, divided by the swift keel 
of the lonely ship, was for a time a soulless firework. 

The magic of it — the magic of it ! 

Thereafter we staggered across the Adriatic, over 
the ridge and furrow of a grey and unquiet sea, till 
we found quiet below the heel of Italy. Soon to the 
south-west the horizon lay in skeins of smoke, and 
it was not for hours afterward that the cone of Etna, 
uprearing itself, showed whence the trouble came. 
Narrower grew the straits, till we passed out 
263 


A REAPING 


beside Messina, and for the pillar of smoke which 
Etna had raised all day we sighted Stromboli, a 
pillar of fire by night. Next morning we were in 
the narrows between Corsica and 1 Sardinia, and 
saw the little villages, tiny and toy-like, in the 
island, whence sprang the brain that was to light 
all Europe with the devouring flame of its burning. 
If the dead return, I think it is not in Elba or 
St. Helena, nor even in the pomp of Paris, nor on 
the battle-field, that we must guess that Napoleon 
wanders. He sees the impotence of his destructive 
and untiring genius. The lines of his new map of 
Europe have been gently defaced again by time, 
and he sits quiet enough by the little house, where 
still the descendants of his old nurse dwell, and 
sees the innocent campaigning of her grandchildren 
in their childish games. And when the time comes 
for unflinching justice to be done to that unflinching 
spirit, who spared none, nor had pity, so long as by 
any sacrifice the realization of his ruthless imaginings 
came true, will not the spirit of his old nurse stand 
advocate, and remind Justice that, even in the 
midst of his gigantic schemes, he remembered her 
who had given him suck, and provided for her 
maintenance ? Somewhere in that iron soul was 
the soft touch of childish days : he was kind who 
was so terrible, and that pen so unfacile and so 
bungling that he hated to write at all put a little 
paragraph of scarcely decipherable words to his 
will that showed (what would otherwise have been 
incredible) how a certain gentleness of heart underlay 
the iron. 


264 


APRIL 


Though all these sights — the chimney of Etna, the 
furnace of Stromboli, the island of Napoleon — were 
but milestones, passed before, to show us now how 
far we were travelling from the magic land, yet 
each brought us nearer in time and space to the 
magic of home, and of the day, yet unnamed, which 
must already, like some peak of an unknown range, 
be beginning to rear itself up in the foreground of 
the future. 

Then, as the magnet of Greece grew more remote, 
the magnet of home gained potentiality, until there 
was no question which was the stronger. We had 
intended — that is to say, more than half intended — 
to stay a day or two in Paris ; instead, we fled 
through Paris as if it had been a spot plague- 
ridden, meaning to pass the night in London. But 
even as we scurried from Gare de Lyon to Gare du 
Nord, so, too, we scurried from Victoria to Waterloo, 
with intention now fully declared to get down to 
the dear home without pause. As far as I remember, 
we sustained life on thick brown tea and a Sahara 
of currant-cake ; but at the end there was the 
snorting motor waiting at the station, and a mile of 
sleeping streets, cheered by the vision of Mr. Holmes 
going somewhere in a neat Inverness cape and 
buttoned boots, a mile of spring-scented country 
road, and then the little house, discreet behind its 
shrubbery, where was the rose-garden, among other 
things, and among other things the nursery. 

The night was very warm, and lit by the full moon 
of April, so, after we had dined, and run like two 
children from room to room in the house, first to 
265 


A REAPING 


greet all the precious things of home, with Fifi, like 
an animated corkscrew, performing prodigies of 
circular locomotion round us, we found that there 
was still a large part of home to greet, and so 
went out into the garden, to see what April had 
brought forth there. No sudden riot or con- 
flagration of leaf and flower, like that which we had 
seen blaze over the lower slopes of Pentelicus, was 
there, but April day by day had done his gentle 
work, so that where we had left a bed still winter- 
naked it was now mapped out into the claims of the 
plants. To-morrow there would be disputes to be 
settled, for the day-lily had pegged out more than 
her share, and between her and the iris a del- 
phinium would be crowded out of existence. But 
every plant — such is our rule — may claim all the 
ground it can get until the end of April ; then come 
round the judges of the court of appeal, and if any 
plant distinctly says, ‘ I have not room to grow, 
because of these encroachers/ his appeal, if he 
promises at all well, is usually upheld, and the en- 
croacher is shorn of his unreasonable encroachments. 
Even by the moonlight it was quite certain that the 
court of appeal had a heavy day in front of it : 
there were lawsuits regarding land to settle, which 
would require most careful adjustment, for the 
court hates depriving a rightful possessor of that 
which his vigour has appropriated. On the other 
hand, the slender aristocracy of the bed (for the 
aristocrat grows upwards rather than sideways) 
must not be elbowed out of existence. One plant 
only is allowed to do exactly what it pleases and 
266 


APRIL 


when it pleases — the pansy, which is * for thoughts ’ 
that are always sweet, and so may roam unchecked 
and welcome, for who would set limits to the wan- 
derings of so kindly and humble a soul ? It but 
touches the ground, too (to be absolutely honest, I 
must confess that this has something to do with the 
liberties we give it), as a moth still hovering and 
on the wing draws from the flower the sustenance 
it needs. It does not, so to speak, sit down to make 
a square meal, or burrow with searching roots deep 
into the earth, and drain it of all its treasure, but 
it is ever on the move, like some bright-eyed beggar- 
girl, to whom none but the churlish would grudge 
the wayside halfpenny. She will not linger and 
settle and sponge on your bounty, but be off again 
elsewhere next moment, just turning to you a 
smiling face, and whispering a murmured thanks 
in the bright language of flowers. So she is privi- 
leged to wander even in the sacred territory of the 
roses, where I hope she has already wandered wide. 
There, however, we did not penetrate to-night, for 
it and the meadow we kept for the morrow. But 
on the top margin of the field against the sky I 
saw shapes that were unmistakable. To-morrow 
our hearts will go dancing with the daffodils. 

But to-night we are content with the thoughts 
that the pansies have given us, and can even forgive 
Milton for speaking of them as * freaked with jet/ 
Freaked with jet ! — when Ophelia had said that 
they were ‘ for thoughts ’! But, then, Milton 
speaks of the ‘ well-attired woodbine/ which is 
almost as bad. Imagine looking at pansies, and 
267 


A REAPING 


finding it incumbent on one to say : ' I perceive 
they are freaked with jet ’! But, as one who had 
the highest appreciation of Milton remarked, to 
appreciate Milton is the reward of consummate 
scholarship, which was certainly a very pleasant 
reflection for himself, and perhaps if I were a better 
scholar I should think with appreciation of the 
pansy * freaked with jet/ As it is, I merely con- 
clude that Milton was flower-blind — a sad affliction. 

Helen is absolutely ultra- Japanese in her observ- 
ance of the flower-festivals, of which she marks 
some dozen of red-letter days in the year. They 
cannot, of course, be celebrated on any fixed day, 
since, owing to the vagaries of climate, there might 
not be a single lily to be seen, for instance, this year 
on the actual day which was Lily-day a year ago. 
She waits instead, like the Japanese, until the par- 
ticular flower is in the zenith of its blossoming, and 
then proclaims the festival. Other flowers, natur 
ally, sometimes are at their best on the red-letter day 
of another, but this, as she observes, is canonically 
correct, since St. Simon and St. Jude, and St. Philip 
and St. James, are celebrated together. I was not, 
therefore, the least surprised next morning, when, 
after a short excursion to the garden, she came into 
breakfast, saying : 

‘ It is Daffodil-day, and the day of its sisters of 
the spring/ 

‘ But we had the sisters of the spring in Greece/ 
said I. 

‘ Yes ; that is the advantage of going to Greece : 

268 


APRIL 


the Greek calendar is different to ours. We had 
Easter Day before we started, and another Easter 
Day when we got there. Besides, it was Anemone- 
day, and the day of its sisters of the spring. The 
anemone’s sisters were not the same as the daffo- 
dil’s.’ 

This was convincing (even if I needed conviction, 
which I did not), and Daffodil-day it was. 

After the early heats of February the year had 
had a long set-back in March, and though April 
was nearly over, I doubt whether there had been 
any more gorgeous decoration in our absence than 
that which we found waiting this morning in the 
church of the daffodils and its sisters of the spring. 
It was not in vain that we had dug and delved last 
autumn with such strenuous patience, for that half- 
acre of field beside the rose-garden was a thing to 
make the blind see. A rainbow of blossom lay over 
it all : the early tulips had opened their great 
chalices of gold and damask ; the blue mist of 
forget-me-nots seemed as if a piece of the sky had 
fallen, and lay mutely under the trees ; brown- 
speckled fritillaries crouched shyly in the grass, and 
their white-belled sister nestled beside them ; nar- 
cissus was there, all yellow, and narcissus with the 
eye of the pheasant ; primroses still lingered, waiting 
for Helen’s proclamation to take part in the festival ; 
while some bluebells had hurried to be here in time ; 
crocuses in the grass were like the dancing of the sun 
on green waters, or purple as the deep-sea caves ; 
the anemones, greedy for more festivals, had 
hurried overland from Greece to be here before us ; 

269 


A REAPING 


and clumps of iris were like banners carried in pro- 
cession. These were the sisters of the spring. It 
was their day ; but first it was Daffodil-day. Slender 
and single, tall and yellow, it was as if through the 
web of them, the golden net that they had laid over 
the field, that you perceived their sisters. And the 
sun shone on them, and the great blue sky was 
over them, and the warm wind made them dance 
together. 

After a long time, Helen spoke. 

* Oh, oh !’ she said. 

That about expressed it. 

* My heart with pleasure fills/ she added. 


270 



MAY 



27I 


MAY 


It always seems to me a matter for wonder why the 
astronomers, or Julius Caesar, or whoever it was 
who took the trouble to divide time up into months 
and years, should have made the day of the New 
Year come in the middle of winter. Probably it 
has got something to do with the solar eclipse, or 
the lunar theory, or movements and motions quite 
unintelligible to the ordinary mind, which would 
easily have seen the point of beginning the New 
Year in spring — for instance, on May-day — when 
the season is clearly suitable for beginning again. 
But to make a fresh start by candlelight in a 
fog on the first of January implies a more vivid 
effort of the imagination and a sterner resolve of 
the spirit than most of us are able to manage. 
You might as well try to make up for misspent 
years by selecting Blackfriars or Baker Street 
Station as a place to start afresh in. 

Personally, though I think the ist of May would 
be a quite reasonable occasion on which to begin a 
New Year, I should prefer a rather later date, when 
summer is more certain, and it was for this reason 
that when I formed this (I hope) harmless little 
project of putting down the quiet happenings of 
273 s 


A REAPING 


a year of life, I began in June. Month by month I 
kept this diary, and you will see when you come to 
the end of this month of May that my plan was en- 
dorsed by what happened then, and that New Year j 
must, in the future, always begin for Helen and me 
on the first of June. 

Even with the early days of May summer de- 
scended on us, and Mr. Holmes’ Panama hat and 
a neat new suit of yellowish flannel made their due ; 
appearance to confirm the fact. Soon, if this goes 
on, he will be handing ices instead of buns at tea- 
parties, and I have often seen him lately on the 
ladies’ links playing golf in his little buttoned boots. | 
He came to call yesterday, and told me of Char- 
lotte’s engagement, and announced the fact that j 
my Archdeacon (I call him mine because of what ; 
happened at that dreadful Sunday-school) was 
giving a garden-party on the nth, and the wife of 
the younger son of our Baronet had not been in- ! 
vited. The fact of the garden-party on the nth 
was not new to us, because We Had Been Invited. 
Oh, revenge is sweet, and we gloated over the dis- 
comfiture of the foe. Her mother had been a 
governess, too. That was a new fact that Mr. 
Holmes had gathered in the last half-year — just a 
governess, and not in a noble family even, but in 
the employment of a retired tradesman. That 
accounted for the fact that her daughter spoke 
French so well ; no wonder, since the mother had to 
teach it. Her knowledge of that language, scraps 
of which she constantly introduced into her conver- 
274 


MAY 


sation, had always puzzled Mr. Holmes ; now he 
knew how it had been acquired. Indeed, she had 
come rightly by it, poor thing ! We none of us 
grudged it her. And it was no wonder now to 
Mr. Holmes that she looked so thin ; probably she 
had never had enough to eat when she was a child, 
and that indescribable air of commonness about her 
was perfectly accounted for. Indeed, Mr. Holmes 
became so sardonic that you would have thought 
that his family was one (as I dare say it is) compared 
to which the Plantagenets were parvenus; and 
Helen changed the subject, which I thought was a 
pity, as I wanted to hear ever so much more about 
the lady’s obscure origin. 

We chatted very pleasantly for a long time, and 
learned all that the Morning Post had said in little 
paragraphs during the past week, and all that the 
Close and the County (I recommend that expression) 
and the Military were doing here. We were going 
to be very gay indeed ; there was already an absolute 
clash of entertainments during a week of cricket 
next month, so that the Mayor was forced to give a 
luncheon-party one day instead of a mere tea, 
which he would probably not like at all, since if 
ever there was a Mayor who collected candle-ends, 
this was the one. Did I remember that which was 
called champagne at the famous lunch which has 
already been spoken of ? 

In fact, Mr. Holmes shook his head over the 
general trend of affairs, and spoke quite bitterly 
about the wave of Radicalism which was passing 
over the country. The County Club, so he said, 
275 s 2 


A REAPING 


which had always prided itself on being a little 
exclusive, was tainted with commonness now, and 
had positively disgraced itself at the last election 
by letting in those three new members. They were 
nobodies — local nobodies — one the son of a doctor, 
another the father of a doctor ; the third nobody at 
all. And — would I believe it ? — there had been a 
veterinary surgeon up for election as well. Luckily, 
the club had pulled itself together over him, and 
given him a smart shower of black-balls. No 
doubt the club was in want of funds, but why, then, 
have built a new billiard-room ? How much better 
to poke the butt-end of our cues into the chimney- 
piece, as we had always done when playing from 
over the left-hand middle pocket, than purchase 
increased cue-room at the sacrifice of our standing ; 
as a County Club ? If we did not draw the line 
somewhere, where were we to draw the line ? That 
was unanswerable. We all said what is written, 

* Tut !’ and looked very proud. Helen, I con- 
sider, looked prouder than Mr. Holmes, but she 
disagrees with me, having seen her own face in the 
looking-glass over the mantelpiece. True, she had 
not the natural advantage that Mr. Holmes's 
aquiline nose conferred upon him, but the assumed 
curl of her lip was superb : she looked like a Duchess 
in her own right. 

How slowly these beautiful days of May passed, 
for when one is very happy and very expectant, time 
seems to stop. Exactly the opposite happens when 
one is spending days that are full of pleasures, and 

276 


MAY 


living entirely in the moment, for then hours and 
days pass on unregarded, so that it is Saturday 
again before you know the week has really begun. 
But happiness — I but bungle with words over a 
thing that is obvious to everybody who knows the 
difference between happiness and pleasure — is a 
thing quite detached from the present moment, just 
as the sunlight which floods these downs is not of 
them. Happiness ever broods on the wing, and 
swings high above the things of the earth, like some 
poised eagle, or like the sun itself. It illuminates 
what it looks on, turning dew to diamond, and 
striking sapphires into the heart of what has been 
a grey sea, but it is independent of material con- 
cerns ; and were the world to be withdrawn and ex- 
tinguished, it would shine still. True, it shines on 
the dewdrop and turns it into wondrous prismatic 
colours, and thus the common surface of life is 
always iridescent when we are happy. But happi- 
ness — that golden, high-swung sun — does not, I 
think, particularly regard the jewels he makes out 
of common things : his own bright shining, perhaps, 
weaves a golden haze between him and what he 
shines upon. 

It was somehow thus, I think, that things were 
with us during that first fortnight of May. Below 
the golden haze were these entrancing facts which I 
have just recorded about the Archdeacon’s party, 
the frightful disclosures concerning the mother of 
the wife of the younger son of the Baronet, and 
the growing plebeianism of the County Club ; but 
277 


A REAPING 


neither Helen nor I could focus our attention on them ; 
for though, as I have said, time went so slowly, yet 
there was not time enough to regard them : they 
belonged to a different plane to that on which we 
were living. We could penetrate down into it and 
giggle, but then our attention wandered, and 
before we knew it, we had swum up again like 
bubbles through water to the sunlit surface. 

There took place, in fact, a revision in our list of 
joyful and dreadful affairs. No one could appreciate 
the humour of Mr. Holmes more than Helen did, 
but, as I have said, she could not attend to him now. 
Nor could she attend to the perfectly hideous fact 
that the greater part of the ceiling in the dining- 
room in Sloane Street had fallen, and that our 
tenants had (quite reasonably) demanded to be re- 
leased from their tenancy, of which there was 
still six weeks to run, since the house was unin- 
habitable. Nor do I think she would have cared 
if the ceiling had smothered them as they sat at 
dinner. And the dreadful earthquake in China 
failed to move her, and so did the church crisis in 
France. But for certain other things she cared 
more than ever, though you would have said they 
were little enough. All the growth of the spring- 
time made her eyes brighten and ever grow dim 
again, and she would dream over the tiny buds of 
the rose-garden with smiles that were sped to her 
mouth from the inmost spring of happiness. She 
spread fat Heliogabalian feasts for the birds, since 
they wanted nourishment now that they were so 
busy over their nests, and many dyspeptic bachelors 
278 


MAY 


and spinsters, I expect, reeled daily from their 
table laid on the lawn to sleep off the results of their 
excess. She loved the sun, too, more than she had 
ever loved it, and the shade also, and day and night, 
and all the firm, great forces of the world. 

Not less, too, did she love the little things of 
little rooms, and now we never sat in the drawing- 
room, with its Reynolds’ prints, but went always 
to the nursery, with its rocking-horse and its Noah’s 
ark, and its lead soldiers, and its play-table. But 
when there — when playing these silly games of 
soldiers, which Helen had been wont to play as if 
eternal salvation depended on the nice adjustment 
of a small tin cannon, which, when you pulled a 
string, shot a pea — she had a change of mood most 
disconcerting at first. Now and again she shot 
down my Generalissimo, posted, as he should be, 
out of possibility of attack almost, in the very rear 
of my army, by some inconceivable ricochet which 
would a few weeks ago have filled her mouth with 
laughter. But now, when these unspeakable flukes 
occurred, and she upset the heaviest soldiers in my 
brigade, instead of being delighted, she was sorry, 
and apologized. To injury, which was bad enough, 
she added insult, which was worse, and said : ' I am 
afraid I must win now.’ 

There is another curious thing (Helen looks over 
my shoulder as I write, and agrees) that, though 
she still loves to play soldiers, she wants me to win. 
Consider it : whoever before wanted to play a 
game (and the more childish the game, the less 
279 


A REAPING 


worth while you would have thought to play it), if 
he did not care about winning ? Besides, it is so 
exceedingly unlike her — she is looking over my 
shoulder no more — not to play any game as if life 
and death depended on it. But now she applauds 
my skill and my luck, and apologizes for her own. 

And then, when the game is over, and the Duke 
of Wellington on one side and Julius Caesar on the 
other lie dead, she still sits on the ground beside 
the low play-table, and looks round the room with 
wandering, happy eyes. There are the playthings 
I have told you of — the Noah’s ark, the rocking- 
horse, the great dolls’ -house, the front of which, 
windows and door and all, is unfastened by a neat 
latch in the wall of the second story, and swings 
open altogether, so that you must be careful not 
to unlatch it early in the morning or late at night, 
else you would see all the ladies and gentlemen at 
their toilet in an embarrassing state of undress. I 
found Helen the other morning playing at dolls all 
by herself. She had laid a banquet in the dining- 
room, and had arranged the ladies and gentlemen 
on the stairs, so that one could see at once that they 
were going down to dinner. From their attitudes, 
and a tendency to lean against each other or the 
wall, you might have thought that they were trying 
to get upstairs after the banquet. But that, Helen 
told me, was foolish, since their faces were all turned 
in the direction of downstairs. The answer was that 
they had indulged even more freely than I had sup- 
posed, and were trying to get upstairs backwards. 

280 


MAY 


Yes ; we did all these extremely childish things, 
and so far from being ashamed of them, I set them 
all down here for you to laugh at if you like, or 
merely to be bored with. Things like these — play- 
ing at soldiers or at dolls — retained their interest, 
just as did the spirit of the blossoming summer, 
when Mr. Holmes's discoveries or the fall of the 
ceiling in Sloane Street lacked the calibre to in- 
terest us. And, if you come to think of it, though 
I thought an explanation would be difficult, nothing 
in the world could be more simple. Things about 
children, and birth, and growth were clearly the 
only affairs that could concern us. One morning, I 
remember, it was found that the foundations of the 
cathedral were in a dreadful state, and that it would 
probably fall down. I told Helen this as she was 
engaged on preparing a Gargantuan breakfast for 
the birds. She only said : 

‘ Oh, what a pity !' 

That was all she cared for the historic Norman 
pile, with all kinds of Kings and Queens buried 
inside it ! 

There is nothing more to be recorded of this 
month, since the only things that seemed to us to 
have any real importance were just the childishnesses 
of which I have already given you such amplitude 
of specimens, until the morning of the last day of 
May. 

The rule of the house was that there was no rule 
of any sort as regards breakfast. Anybody who 
came into the dining-room at most hours of the 
281 


A REAPING 


morning would find the breakfast perennials (bread, 
butter, sugar, milk, the morning paper and marma- 
lade) on the table, and would, on ringing a bell, 
be given the annuals — i.e., fresh tea and a hot dish. 
Similarly, anybody who did not come into the 
dining-room was supposed to be breakfasting either 
elsewhere or not at all. So on this last morning of 
May, on coming down, I rang the bell, and read the 
paper till bacon came. An hour before I had just 
looked into Helen’s room, and seen that she was 
still asleep. 

The bacon was rather long coming that morning — 
I try to reconstruct the day exactly as it happened — 
and I had already skimmed the news, and found 
there was not any, and in default of it was reading 
a superb account of the visit of a member of the 
Royal Family to Naples, who in the afternoon had 
‘ honoured ’ (so said the loyal press) the volcano of 
Vesuvius with a visit. How gratifying for the 
immortal principle of fire ! One hoped it wouljl 
not become swollen in the head. This fortunate 
volcano, whose cone had been blessed 

At the moment I heard a step outside. It was 
not from the kitchen : it was coming from upstairs, 
and it came very quickly. Then, instantaneously, 
terror seized me, for time and place were no longer 
now and here, but it was the evening when I heard 
my name called in the garden, and thereafter heard 
Legs running downstairs. And quickly as the steps 
came, they seemed to me to go on for ever ; yet I 
had only just time to get up, when there came a 
282 


MAY 

fumbling hand on the door, and Helen’s maid 
came in. 

‘ If you please, sir, would you send at once,’ she 
began. * The nurse ’ 

There were quicker ways than sending, and next 
minute I was flying up the road on my bicycle. My 
mind, as I think must always happen with any 
mind in such moments, seemed curiously inactive, 
though somewhere there was inside me a little bit of 
tissue, so to speak, that agonized, and hoped, and 
prayed. But for the most I only thought of one 
thing — that once before I had gone on just the same 
errand, from this same house, up the same road, to 
fetch the doctor for her, my dearest friend. O 
Margery ! go quickly to God and tell Him. . . . We 
want Him. 

And then the tissue that agonized and prayed 
sank out of sight again, and I was just speeding up 
the sunny, dusty road, on which, as I got nearer the 
town, the traffic became denser. Once a butcher’s 
cart pulled suddenly out into the middle of the 
road in front of me, and I thought collision was in- 
evitable, except that I knew that it was not pos- 
sible that I should be stopped when going on such 
an errand as this, and several times I passed people 
I knew, yet, though I knew them, their faces were 
meaningless : they conveyed names, but nothing 
whatever more. And then — whether very soon or 
countless ages later, I had no idea — I was at the 
doctor’s door in the quiet, decorous street, which 
also was meaningless — neither strange nor familiar, 
but purely without significance. Everything I saw 
283 


A REAPING 


was detached ; nothing had any relation to life, 
except just one thing : his dog-cart, which was at 
the door, concerned me. 

He had not yet started on his rounds, and it was 
not five minutes before he was ready. He had only 
to pick up a little bag, into which he put a case of 
some kind, and something bright, that I turned my 
eyes from, and a bottle which he wrapped up — it 
seemed to me very neatly and slowly — which 
clinked against that which was already in the bag. 

Then he turned to me. 

‘ Now, if you take my advice/ he said, * you 
won’t come back with me, but will go for a ride on 
this beautiful morning. You will not see your wife, 
and for the next hour or so it is not possible that I 
should have anything to tell you. We don’t want 
you in the house : we don’t want to be bothered 
with you.’ 

He got briskly into his dog-cart, nodded to me 
over his shoulder, and, instead of driving himself, 
gave his servant the reins. I know I shouted some- 
thing after him, telling him, I think, to be careful, 
and so found myself on the doorstep, looking at a 
bicycle which was leaning against the pillar of the 
porch, and was evidently not mine. But, like the 
dog-cart, it was not meaningless, for it was Helen’s, 
which I must have used by mistake. I must take 
it back ; it was careless of me. 

Then his advice occurred to me, but it sounded 
ridiculous, as senseless as some nursery-rhyme. And 
at the thought there suddenly started in my head 
the first two lines of * Humpty-Dumpty.’ I could 
284 


MAY 


not remember the last two lines, but the first went 
round and round in my brain, keeping time to my 
pedalling. 

Soon after I was home again, only a moment be- 
hind him, for he was just getting out when I came 
to the gate, and I waited till he had gone in, so that 
he should not know I had failed to follow his advice 
— at least, I believe that was the reason, but I am 
not sure. 

I went round by the back way into the garden, 
and sat down in the veranda outside my own room, 
where Fifi was lying in the sun. But I had to coax 
her silently indoors, for I could not bear that she 
should lie there, lest suddenly she should again look 
out into the garden, and howl at something she saw 
there. She would not come in at first, and once 
she pricked her ears at something she saw outside, 
and I stopped mine, lest I should hear her howl. 
And all the time * Humpty-Dumpty ' — the first two 
lines of it — went on and on. It was so terribly 
lonely, too — just that silly rhyme, and I all alone. 
If only Legs were here, or anybody — anybody. You 
see, this was not expected to-day, nor for weeks 
yet. My mother was coming to stay with us next 
week, until. ... 

Then I heard the muffled sound of steps in the 
room just above my head — Helen’s room — and at 
that for a little the babble and confusion of my 
troubled brain cleared, and ‘ Humpty-Dumpty ’ 
ceased, and I was not afraid of Fifi howling, for 
there was no room for anything except the thought 
of Helen, who lay there, and of the life yet unborn. 

285 


A REAPING 


And I could not help — I could not bear any of it 
for her. I could not even be with her : birth was 
as lonely as death. 

Outside the garden lay basking in the heat of the 
early summer, and everywhere the expansion of 
life, which had seemed to us so wonderful and 
glorious a thing through all these weeks of May, 
suddenly became sinister and menacing. What 
travail may not go to the opening of a single flower, 
or the maturing of its casket of seeds ? It would 
all be of a piece with the cruelty and the anguish 
that runs through life like a scarlet, bleeding thread, 
beginning, as now, even before birth, and not even 
ending with death, since those who remain have the 
wound of that yet to be healed. Right through 
life goes the scarlet thread, knotted on the farther 
side at each end, so that it shall not slip. And — 
* Humpty-Dumpty sat on a wall/ Ah, yes ! I 
had it all now. ‘ The King’s horses ’ was what I 
could not remember. And at that the crowd of 
trivialities again came between my mind and me. 

We had set up the croquet-hoops again only last 
week, and had argued over the position of that 
particular corner one by which my ball had rested 
when last autumn a telegram had been brought me 
from the house. Helen had said it was square with 
the corresponding corner ; I knew it was not, and 
from here it was perfectly easy to see that she had 
been wrong. I hate an awry disposition of hoops. 
‘ All the King’s horses ’ . . . they really should 
bring these rhymes up to date ; it ought to be motor- 
cars instead of horses. 


286 


MAY 


These things passed very slowly through my 
mind, for it acted as if it was numbed and half- 
paralyzed, and the croquet-hoop occupied the fore- 
ground of it for a considerable time. I had let Fifi 
out again, and she was racing about the lawn in 
the attempt to catch swallows, a feat of which she 
never realized the unreasonableness, and I had left 
the doors into my room, both from the hall and from 
here outside, open. And then, with the same 
rapidity as they had come, all these nonsense 
things passed away again, for I heard steps on the 
stairs, and, going in, saw the doctor standing on the 
landing above, talking in low tones to the nurse. 
He saw me, made a little movement of his hand as 
if to detain me, and when he had finished what he 
had to say to her, came downstairs. 

‘ I will have a word with you/ he said gravely ; 
and we went into my room. I saw him looking at 
me rather curiously, and was wondering why, when 
he suddenly seemed to lean up against me. Then I 
perceived that it was I who was swaying on my feet. 
He put me in a chair. 

* I suppose you have not had breakfast/ he said. 
* You are to eat something immediately ; I will 
ring the bell. And now listen. It is going to be 
difficult, and, I am afraid, dangerous, and it is better 
that you should know it now/ 

And then the dear, kind man just laid his hand on 
my arm. 

* I'm awfully sorry/ he said ; * you can’t think 
how I hate to tell you this. I hope it will be all right ; 
there is nothing yet that forbids me to hope that. 

287 


A REAPING 

Please God, we shall pull her through, but — well, 
well/ 

He broke off as the door opened, and a servant 
came in. 

* Just bring a tray in here/ he said. * Tea ? 
Yes, tea, and an egg and a couple of bits of toast. 
Thank you/ 

‘ Remember, I still hope it will be all right/ 
he said. ‘ And even if — well, you are both young 
still. Now I shall be back here in an hour at the 
outside/ 

* You are not going/ I said. * You mustn’t/ 

* Yes, yes. I know what you feel/ he said. 

‘ But there is nothing for me to do here yet, and I 
have to make arrangements so that I can come back 
and remain here till all — is satisfactory/ 

4 You don’t stir from this house,’ I said. 

‘ Do you think I should go if there was the slightest 
possibility of your wife needing me ?’ he said 
quietly. 

* No ; I beg your pardon.’ 

* That’s all right. Now when your breakfast 
comes, eat it, and read a book if you can, or go and 
garden. I am sure those roses of yours want looking 
after, and I tell you it’s a hard thing for a man in 
your position, and a thing which we doctors respect, 
to go and occupy himself. If you can’t, you can’t, 
but you might have a try/ 

The servant brought in a tray before many minutes, 
and with it the morning paper. When I had eaten, 
I took it up and looked at it. There was no news, 
but the middle page contained an account of a visit 
288 


MAY 


to Vesuvius by an English Prince. He ‘ honoured ’ 
the volcano with a visit. And then I knew that I 
had seen the paper before. But when ? Years 
and years ago, or this morning ? 

What the doctor had said to me needed no time 
or thought for realizing it. I felt as if I had known 
it all along — known it all my life. But — what hap- 
pened next, if that all happened long ago ? Was 
the room overhead the chamber of death or the 
chamber of birth ? Next door to it was the nursery, 
with its Noah’s ark and its soldiers and its rocking- 
horse. Who was going to ride on that ? And the 
dolls’-house, with its tottering inhabitants — who 
next was to play with those, and open the wall ? 
Oh, Helen, Helen, you and your child, will it be ? 
Or will it be you and I again, but after a long time, 
hoping once more ? Or — dear God, no, not that ! 

Daffodil-day, and its sisters of the spring ! And 
Rose-day will come next month. Roses . . . heaped 
for the beloved’s bed. Dear God, not that : it does 
not mean that bed. Indeed — indeed it does not. 
You have so many souls already in Your house of 
many mansions. Give us a few more years together, 
for they are so sweet, and a thousand years in Your 
sight are but as yesterday. And we should so like 
a young thing, one of our own, in the house. But 
. . . thank You very much for the years that have 
been so sweet. They have been — they have been. 
And, please don’t let her suffer or be frightened. 

Then I went across the lawn and into the rose- 
garden. Though we had been very industrious 
289 T 


A REAPING 


there, I never saw yet the rose-tree on which there 
is nothing to be done, and for a little my hands made 
themselves busy. Then quite suddenly it all became 
impossible, and there was nothing in the world 
except what the doctor had told me, and floating 
on the top of that * Humpty-Dumpty, Humpty- 
Dumpty/ 

So it was within the hour that I got back again 
to the house, and the doctor had not yet returned. 
I missed something familiar on the lawn, without at 
once knowing what it was, and then I saw that the 
birds' breakfast was not there. That took me to 
the dining-room, where I found lunch was already 
laid, and with bread-crumb and little bits of cheese, 
and cold meat mixed, I made a plateful for them, 
though, as you know, it was the last day of May, 
and I suppose it was but pauperism among the 
thrushes that I encouraged. But Helen all these 
days had done so. I knew she would not like them 
to miss their provision. 

Soon after — so soon that the news of their belated 
meal had not yet become public among the birds — 
the doctor returned. I heard him go upstairs, and 
after that I crept into the hall, and sat down on the 
lowest step of the seventeen that led to the landing. 
Legs used to jump down them in two bounds, taking 
eight steps first, and then nine, and get up (with 
a run) in three — two sixes and a five. . . . What 
am I maundering about ? And before very long I 
must have been sitting higher up the stairs, for 1 
could see out of the window on the staircase. The 
dog-cart had drawn away from the door into the 
290 


MAY 


shade, and the groom had got down, and was gently 
stroking the mare’s nose. Then he laid his smooth 
young cheek against it, and she stood quite still, 
liking it. I expect he is kind to her. 

The sun had swung round farther to the west, and 
it came in through the window. But now I was 
nearly at the top of the stairs ; there were but three 
above where I sat. The house was very still ; below 
me on the ground-floor there had been no step or sign 
of life, and there was nothing from behind the second 
door to the left just above me. Then came the 
sharp tingle of an electric bell. There was only one 
room from which it could have come. 

I tapped very gently, though my heart beat so 
that I thought it must have been a hammer-noise 
to those inside. The door opened a chink, and a 
level, quiet voice said : ‘ Some hot water, please 
— very hot.’ Perhaps a minute afterwards I tapped 
again, and a hand took the can of hot water from me. 

I went back again, this time to the top step, and 
still waited. Since I had done something, though i t 
was but the handing of a can of hot water into the 
room, that nightmare of incoherent thoughts began 
to clear more completely, and, like some remembered 
sunlight breaking clouds, and shining with the serene 
quietude of eventide, Helen — she herself, no inter- 
cepted vision, no vision even of remembrance only or 
anxiousness — shone out. Whatever happened, she 
was I, and I was she, and the Will of God, whatever 
It might ordain for us, could not alter that. She 
and I, I think, have never feared anything when we 
were together, and surely of all days that life or death 
291 


A REAPING 


could hold for us, we could never be more together 
than to-day. So, surely, of all hours this is the one 
when fear should be farthest from us, for never have 
we been together like this. Yet, O my God, my 
God, since Christ was born of a woman, let Him go 
in there, the second door. . . . 

And the next door. You know, is the nursery. . . . 
No, not the farther one, but the one this side. Yes, 
yes, of course You know, but You might have for- 
gotten. There’s the Noah’s ark there, and the dolls’- 
house, and the lead soldiers. We had hoped. . . . 

Red light came in through the window on the 
stairs — light of sunset. Once more the stinging 
sound of the electric bell came to me ; once more I 
took up a can of hot water. 

Then it grew dark ; in the hall below the lamp had 
been lit, and from the window, after the last red of 
sunset had faded, there came the distant shining 
of stars, endlessly remote. Then the door opened 
again, and the nurse came hurrying out, forgetting 
to close it. From within came the cry of a child. 

* * * * * 

June i. — I overstep the bounds of the year, but 
you may like to know. Quite early this morning I 
was allowed to go in and look. They were sleeping, 
both of them — she and he. 

Afterwards I went into the nursery. 


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